Brooklyn Nets: Why the Nets can and cannot win the series against the Sixers

The Brooklyn Nets have finally done it. For the first time since the 2014-2015 season, the Nets are playoff bound. Led by a young core and brilliant coaching, the Nets will look to upset the Sixers in the first round.

Well, the Brooklyn Nets have done the unthinkable. It was never about the Nets one day making the playoffs. Behind D’Angelo Russell, a solid core such as Caris LeVert, Joe Harris, Spencer Dinwiddie, we knew the Nets would probably make the playoffs one day.

For the Nets this season, it is more about how fast it has happened. While most teams in the NBA build their cores around a) making a super team of players just pulling together to be solid or b) assemble methodically bad roster in order to acquire optimal draft picks, the Nets have done it by taking almost nothing and turning it into something.

It takes a special kind of skills, skills that Nets General Manager Sean Marks apparently possesses to build a team via trades, eating bad contracts to get draft picks, and simply being patient. That is the exact thing Sean Marks has done.

https://twitter.com/BrooklynNets/status/1115028918107561985

The aforementioned Dinwiddie was mere scraps before coming to the Nets. Russell was about to become an astronomical bust. Guys like DeMarre Carroll, who is going to be an asset in the playoffs, and Kenneth Faried, (remember him) were shipped to Brooklyn so their former teams can make a playoff run without worrying about the cap hits.

However, the question is no longer how the Nets got here, no, it has become what to do now that they are here. For many reasons, the Nets are in the playoffs. For many reasons, the Nets had a winning season. While even a 4-0 sweep and quietly going into the night would still make this season a remarkable achievement, let’s not pretend the Nets might actually make a run, behind Russell, they can.

Things don’t get much easier as they prepare to play the mighty Sixers in the first round, but throughout the season, these teams are evenly matched.

Let’s take a minute to go through why the Nets can and why the Nets cannot win the series against the Sixers.  This article will have gone live before Game 1 on Saturday.