"Lopez we have a problem. YOUR IT"

I've been giving the guy a chance for the last three years, but I have seen no improvement whatsoever in the following areas:

1.

On offense he cannot pass out of the double team, nor does he have the timing / fundamentals to do so. He is always hunched over, never has his legs under him where he can deliver a strong pass.

To illustrate:

If he's in the high post and teammate cuts, he rarely passes to them, and when he does, it's often a turnover.

if he's in the low post and he gets doubled, he consistently does one of the following: he either 1) fails to pass it to a wide open teammate on the wing 2) tries to force splitting a double team, or 3) weakly passes into a lane occupied by a defender.

In addition to this, he does not properly set screens for his teammate, he always hedges a screen and cuts to the basket. He will never actually set a solid screen.

I could almost live with these fundamentally flawed offensive problems, but not

2.

On Defense

When he's on defense, the person he is responsible for consistently is the screen man for a guard.Why?

Brook is a terrible team defender

He rarely ever plays the pick and roll defense properly. He will either 1) stay low while his man is being picked, leading to the ball handler getting a wide open shot, or another teammate having to cover up for his defensive error or 2) he comes up tentatively and fails to extend the ball handler to give the primary defender time to cover, leading to the ball handler having an open lane drive to the basket or make a play for someone else.

A large part of these problems is a result of Brooks lack of quickness and basketball IQ.

His individual defensive failures totally compromises the overall team defense.

His only saving grace as a Starter in the NBA is that he has 1) a nice shooting touch, 2) few fundamentally sound offensive moves, and 3) size. All these positives are negated however because he plays this aggressive man's game in a tentative way.

Steve Kerr made an excellent point with regards to Brook Lopez :

( I'm paraphrasing here)

"If he's going to score occassionally and rebound lacadasically, if the Nets are not going to dominate using an inside out game, this lineup is not going to win"

He also added this point:

"it's easy to put up numbers when you on bad teams"

Those thoughts perfectly sum up the problem with the beloved Brook Lopez.

While Andray Blatche has his flaws both offensively and defensively, at least he plays aggressively on occasion, and makes the right defensive play from time to time. If Blatche ever develops some consistency, I would not be surprised to see him as the starting center for the team very soon.

And the saddest thing, the Nets just gave Brook Lopez a max contract! A max contract! A player, to whom no other team in the entire league gave an offer sheet!

I know that many Nets fans get on the Knicks for giving Amare a max contract, but at least Amare's team won for a while because of his MVP type play. I wish we could say that for a team in which Brook was the featured offensive player. But sadly we can't.

Until net's management reach their senses and abandon building their team with Brook Lopez as a focal point, the combination of Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Gerald Wallace and Marshon Brooks - reaching their potential is very limited.