When the Celtics draw the curtain on the 2016-17 season Wednesday night, it is only appropriate that it will all begin against the Brooklyn Nets.
The futures of these teams remain inextricably linked, at least for the next two seasons. When the Nets stumble — and make no mistake, they will stumble — Celtics fans will rejoice. When the Celtics thrive, Nets fans will cringe.
In 2013, the Celtics traded Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to Brooklyn. They were the two biggest parts of a massive nine-player deal. But it could turn out that the most influential pieces of the mega-trade were just teenagers who had not even reached college yet.
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The Nets traded the Celtics their first-round picks in 2014, 2016, and 2018, and they gave Boston the right to swap first-round picks in 2017. The good news for Brooklyn, which did not advance past the conference semifinals with Pierce and Garnett, is that half of this draft-pick nightmare has now passed.
The Celtics selected James Young with the 17th overall pick in 2014, and he might be waived Monday. Boston then selected forward Jaylen Brown with the No. 3 pick this year, and it will some time before his impact is clear.
But the bad news for Brooklyn is that the future remains quite gloomy. The Nets are still on track to be a bad basketball team while knowing that they will not receive the one precious reward that comes after a bad season: a high first-round pick. The Celtics, meanwhile, will continue to track Brooklyn’s imminent descent.
So what has happened to the Nets since we last saw them? To put it simply: They are still a bad basketball team and there is little reason to believe they will improve upon last season’s 21-win campaign.
Brook Lopez, the Nets’ All-Star-caliber center, remains one of the few pieces that an opposing general manager might covet. And that could be important later on.
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Lopez, 28, has two years remaining on a contract that will pay him $21.2 million this season. He is still young enough that Brooklyn could decide he is the player they would like to build around. But he is also old enough that seeking to trade him for a collection of draft picks and young players could make sense, too, because the Nets are much more than one move away from becoming a good team, particularly with the Celtics owning their picks.
And therein lies the conundrum for the Nets: They are not in a position to make a deal for a difference-maker because their looming assets that would be most valuable are blocked by Boston, and they are not able to rebuild through the draft because the Celtics are clogging that pipeline, too.
So first-year general manager Sean Marks, who came to Brooklyn after working as an assistant general manager with the Spurs, and first-year head coach Kenny Atkinson, who was previously an assistant with the Hawks, have worked to cobble together a respectable roster composed of veterans and castaways.
“There’s a lot of new players, a lot of new staff, new management,” Atkinson said. “We’re all trying to get on the same page, and there’s so many things that go with that. Communication and style of play and establishing the way we want to play. We’ve had some bumps.”
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Brooklyn’s opening-night roster will look very little like the group that started last season. Thaddeus Young, Joe Johnson, Jarrett Jack, and Shane Larkin are all gone. The Nets’ biggest move of the summer was signing point guard Jeremy Lin. They also brought in capable but unglamorous veterans such as Luis Scola, Randy Foye, and Trevor Booker.
Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, a 2015 first-round pick who was limited to 29 games last season because of injury, is Brooklyn’s most promising young player, and the team hopes 2016 first-rounder Caris LeVert, drafted with a pick acquired in the Thaddeus Young trade, will help.
“We’re making progress, but I’m pleased with just the effort and the cohesiveness,” Atkinson said. “You can see there’s a will to play kind of the way we’re trying to play, so it’s good.”
Still, there is a general understanding that it will be a long year for Brooklyn, which means it will be another potentially bountiful year for the Celtics. On Wednesday, as the Celtics look to start this year off in a positive way, they will also attempt to give the Nets their first dent.
. . .
With Monday’s 5 p.m. roster deadline looming, the Celtics still have 16 players under guaranteed contracts. The team will either need to make a trade or waive a player, and all indications are that R.J. Hunter and James Young will be the two players under consideration for the final spot.
Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at adam.himmelsbach @globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @adamhimmelsbach.
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