If there’s one thing all NBA fans love more than tanking, it has to be numbers and math, right?
A few years ago, our old pal Kevin Durant rhetorically (and rather vulgarly) questioned if anyone wants to “look at graphs” while having a conversation about hoops. It’s since become something of a rallying cry for the Ball Don’t Stop’s of the world, those who aren’t just standing pat along the fan dividing line, but pushing against the against the tide of the analytics-minded voices in basketball.
Indeed,
part of the game has gotten lost in the pool of digits we’ve collectively paddled our way across. While Durant’s mid-range remains pure in the big 2026, the back-to-the-basket game seemed to fade away with Al Jefferson and the Gasol brothers. We live in a world where the great Kevin Garnett’s highlight reel almost feels unsettling to watch with every catch from behind the arc, singular step in, and then high-arching jumper he takes.
That said, teams are undoubtedly the performing better because of it. Offensive records are continually broken year after year by players, teams and the league at large. It’s cliché to say, “the game has changed,” but there’s no arguing against that notion.
Now, I’d never call myself a “numbers” guy. I majored in writing and never got farther than Precalc in high school. Take a wild guess at what I struggled with growing up and eventually began to utterly detest by adulthood. That’s right, numbers and math.
However, I do believe those who don’t get on the analytics train will be left behind. And in that, I’ve learned to appreciate the value of a telling stat, and would argue everyone else should to.
So, with us now at the conclusion of Brooklyn’s 2025-26 campaign, I found three stats that exemplify its season. All of them are rather rudimentary, but might’ve gotten swept under the rug amid all the roster turnover and phantom injuries.
Spoiler alert: none of them are particularly positive. However, when you’re serving up a 60-loss dish, that’s just what the recipe calls for. Let’s dive in. The dessert will hopefully come later in the summer.
The Rookies got Their Shots Up
From day one, or even day negative one and beyond, this season was all about the rookies for the Brooklyn Nets. That feeling was so abundant that Jordi Fernández even felt the need to remind the media on more than one occasion that the rookies aren’t the only ones on the team.
Nevertheless, Brooklyn’s shot diet this year did more to endorse the former sentiment. This season, the Nets led the league in total rookie field goal attempts with 2,231. Sure, Brooklyn drafted five rooks last June, the most ever by an NBA team, then added three more. The next closest team was the New Orleans Pelicans, who had three in their rotation as well in Derik Queen, Jeremiah Fears, and Micah Peavy.
Still, New Orleans trailed the Nets by a whopping 171 shots. The Nets also led in triples taken by rookies by over one hundred. And, speaking of that shot…
They had a misplaced Confidence in the Three
Brooklyn finished this season with the worst offense in the league, averaging the fewest points per game and lowest field goal percentage. That’s not a shocking metric to hear if you watched the team at any point this year. The Nets often posted scoring totals that looked like they were ripped off the box score from a 90s game, frequently struggling to crack triple digits.
But while Brooklyn’s shot diet was rather modern, averaging the 11th most triples taken per game in the league, it didn’t do them any good.
If you live and die by the three, the Nets sure as hell died by it, historically. This year, they averaged 38.4 triples per game, but made them at just a 34% clip. That ranks as the third worst percentage on that many attempts or more in NBA history. Only the Washington Wizards, who shot 33.5% on 39.1 attempts per game last year, the Houston Rockets, who shot 33.9% on 40.6 attempts per game in 2020-21, and the Minnesota Timberwolves, who shot 33.6% on 39.7 attempts per game in 2019-20 insisted on launching more threes … despite having so little success to show for it.
I’m not prepared to argue the Nets would have had any more luck had they pressured the rim or ventured into the midrange more frequently. However, there’s no debating the notion that their investment in the deep ball was a poor one.
One of the worst clutch teams in recent memory
Any successful tank involves fumbling a few games at the goal line. Whether by design or not, this past year, nobody did that better than Brooklyn. In the clutch, which the NBA defines as a game within five points and with five or fewer minutes to play, Brooklyn had a .235 win percentage in this woeful season. That ranks worst in the league.
It was also the third worst posted by any NBA team in the past decade. The Detroit Pistons had a .229 wining percentage in clutch games during the 2023-24 season and a .219 one in 2020-21. The Philadelphia 76ers, being the tanking GOATs that they are, also had a ludicrous .143 clutch winning percentage in 2015-16. Not really surprising when, as Sean Marks mentioned in his YES Network interview, Brooklyn’s roster was the youngest not just this season, but in the last 20 as well.
If this is it for Nic Claxton and the Nets, and if somehow Brooklyn’s somehow able secure a top three pick this summer, fans should applaud Nic Claxton for his efforts in this regard. Clax was a team-worst -64 in 66 clutch minutes this year, with nearly 20 points separating him from the next closest guy.
Woe is us? No question and any deep dive would tell you the eye test was the least of it.
