Imagine you were paid millions of dollars to do a job were your duties are not much different to a glorified fantasy sports participant. Now imagine you weren’t very good at your job; in fact you are a complete disaster who has barely had a productive day in the office.
Then, no matter how bad you are, you are inexplicably never fired.
If you can picture all that, then welcome to Billy King’s world.
King is a real life version of George Costanza working on the Penske file, only his file is the Brooklyn Nets. To put it succinctly, the Nets, as constructed by King in his role as their general manager, are a team with no present and no future.
They are a pitiful 2-11 to start the season, placing them second last in the NBA. The only team below them is the Philadelphia 76ers who, unlike the Nets, are down there by design.
Unlike the other bottom feeders of the standings, the Nets see no light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a high draft pick.
Apparently King failed to read ‘NBA GM for Dummies’, and doesn’t bother to protect any of the picks he trades, which is basic general manager stuff you do just in case stuff doesn’t go as planned. This is especially prudent when your plans are as bad as King’s.
Another point of difference the Nets have from their struggling counterparts is the amount of money they are doling out to roll out such a terrible team. They have the fifth highest payroll in the league at just over $90 million, which is $12 million more than the defending champs and currently undefeated Golden State Warriors.
While there are numerous mistakes along the journey, one of the worst was when Billy mortgaged the Nets’ future by going all in on the present, only for it to fail spectacularly.
It started with a move to retain Deron Williams in 2012. King made a panic trade for Portland’s Gerald Wallace after Dwight Howard backed out of plans to join the Nets by playing his infamously short-lived ‘loyalty’ card with Orlando.
Wallace relied heavily on his athleticism, had significant wear and tear from earning the moniker ‘Crash’, was about to hit 30, and already showing signs of decline. None of the above factors deterred King, who sent Portland a pick with only top-three protection at a time the Nets were sitting out of the playoffs.
It’s the type of pick protection you use when you are extremely confident of being a contender or the player is a bona fide star. Neither the Nets nor Wallace fit this description.
Portland couldn’t say yes fast enough to the deal as they were unlikely to re-sign Wallace anyway, happy to let him walk for nothing at the end of the season. Of course the pick ended up being Damian Lillard who is now one of the premier point guards in the league.
And while the Nets still may not have taken Lillard if they kept the pick, there was a good chance they would have lucked into Andre Drummond or Harrison Barnes who were taken with two of the next three picks.
The situation was summed up best by Wallace himself when he said: “It was one of those stories of a get-rich-quick scheme. They took a gamble, it backfired.”
Rubbing a little more salt in the wound was King re-signing Wallace to a massive $40 million four-year contract when he was only competing against himself for his services. Unsurprisingly, Wallace’s steep regression meant he wouldn’t see out the contract, eventually being waived at the beginning of this season.
But the real stinger is his trade with Boston a year later which will cripple the Nets for years to come.
In a bid to prop up his 49-win team – which was bundled out of the playoffs in the first round by a Derrick Rose-less, Luol Deng-less, one-legged Joakim Noah Chicago Bulls team – King made a trade which has ultimately destroyed the future of the franchise.
He acquired NBA geriatrics, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry from the Celtics and in return gave away a slew of draft picks and pick swaps which are skyrocketing in value as the Nets nosedive to the bottom.
The pick they are giving the Celtics this year will be one of the top contenders for the number one pick and chance at selecting Ben Simmons. The Nets do not own their own first-round selection until 2019, which in sport years is a lifetime away.
It was a massive overpay for overaged veterans who he probably could have gotten with a similar package containing strict pick protection.
Again King had tried to take the shortcut to success and again the gamble didn’t pay off, with the Nets showing only a swift second-round exit for the pleasure.
Admittedly they had some hard luck too, with some long-term injuries, including Deron Williams’s ankles spontaneously combusting, but that’s sport and it’s why smart general managers cover their ass and have contingency plans.
Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov was keen to make a splash in the New York market when moving them to Brooklyn from New Jersey. But that doesn’t excuse the failure to properly protect picks and dropping a nuke on your cap space by chasing down albatross contracts because they are an easy get of a big-name player.
The only hope going forward is that a star free agent will come to take Brooklyn’s cap space during the off-season, but as we’ve learnt in recent years players are choosing the chance to win over big money and big markets.
It’s a tough time to be a Nets fan at the moment but with Billy King still calling the shots, things can always be worse.
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