Skip to main content

With 60 games already in the books, the Brooklyn Nets (25-37) are still stuck in mediocrity. But it's better to have something than nothing as they progressed for plenty of steps in the latest Power Rankings of The Athletic to conclude the third-quarter portion of the season.

Nets land at No. 21

In their third quarter report card, the Nets obtained a “D” grade from The Athletic — a much abysmal mark if compared to the C+ mark they saw in the previous period.

Brooklyn advanced from being at No. 24 to now a No. 21 team in the new Power Rankings of the sports outlet. But amid the improvement, they are still lowly categorized at Tier 5 of the league hierarchy and are classified as “Looking to make the Play-In,” — which is considerably realistic in their current scenario as the East’s 11th-seeded squad.

A disappointing season leads to a coaching assessment for the future

The Athletic’s Zach Harper has maintained his skepticism about the dubious defensive promise that the Nets have failed to meet for themselves throughout the course of the season. As they ended up disappointing in both their second and third quarter season progress, Harper believes that Brooklyn’s remaining segment of their campaign will now only revolve around observing the coaching capabilities of interim head coach Kevin Ollie.

“I’m consistently surprised that this Nets team isn’t better defensively with their personnel, and you can’t just blame it on Ben Simmons’ unavailability. Maybe it was a coaching issue, even though that seemed to be players not liking their offensive schemes/hierarchy. But the Nets should be a little better than what we’ve seen, and they’ve been bad the last 30 games or so. This final stretch is about seeing what they can do under Kevin Ollie and moving forward.”