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Prognosis: Brooklyn Nets immediate future bad, long term future worse!

By Net Income
Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

If you're looking for more bad news on the Nets' future, the other side of the optimism Billy King expressed Tuesday, we are here for you!  While the Nets GM was pointing out the positives of the Nets new roster, ESPN and CBS Sports were publishing scathing reviews of where they've been and what comes next.  It is not pretty..

ESPN Insider's Chad Ford and Kevin Pelton have compiled their latest "Future Power Rankings" -- how each NBA team is expected to fare over the next three seasons-- and the Nets are (drum roll) dead last ... again .  Ford and Pelton who have discussed the Nets flaws before this off-season and found them "likely lottery" and worse, rank the Nets last in both future draft picks and current roster..

<img src="http://assets.espn.go.com/i/infographics/20150922_fpr_nba/bkn.png" alt="" />

The only saving grace is that the Nets have a lot of money and play in a big market (the biggest actually).

Here's their analysis...

Brooklyn remains in last place in the Future Power Rankings, finishing 30th in the roster and draft categories and tied for 28th in management.

The Nets are a classic example of how inexperienced ownership combined with poor management dooms a franchise. Owner Mikhail Prokhorov wanted a championship within five years. Now, five years later, his eagerness has landed the Nets in NBA hell for the foreseeable future.

GM Billy King has thrown most of the franchise's future assets at acquiring veterans Deron Williams, Gerald Wallace, Joe Johnson, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. Now the Nets lack promising young players, with the possible exception of rookie Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. And the best draft pick the Nets are likely to have in the next three years is a single first-round pick from the Celtics, in 2017.

Who has worse management?  Ford and Pelton have the Nets and Knicks tied with the Kings dead last.

Moving on....

CBS Sports Zach Harper, in an article entitled, "How Mikhail Prokhorov mortgaged the Nets' house, then burnt it down," Harper writes that the Nets decided against building with young assets and went for broke, you know,  mortgaged their future.  (For the record, a Google search of "Brooklyn Nets 'mortgaged their future'" returned 1,620 stories Tuesday, that's 50 more than last week.)

Harper's point that at no point along the line since Prokhorov bought the team in May 2010 has ownership exhibited any patience.  He cites everything from trading Derrick Favors and picks to Deron Williams, then 27, to dumping coaches.  Is there any hope?  Just a little...

You could argue the big market could work in their favor, but big-market teams have struggled to gain any sort of recruiting advantage just by being big markets in this latest collective bargaining agreement.

But Harper quickly shoots that down, writing...

I mean, is Kevin Durant really considering this Brooklyn situation? Is anyone with any sort of starpower? This is where the Nets have to hit winning shots on every small free-agent signing and second-round pick they can pilfer. Not exactly a sure bet.

So what's the bottom line?

In the name of marketing, branding and business, this team has been left in shambles.Prokhorov basically built a house of cards and it doesn't even feel like he did it with a full deck. The fans will suffer. The roster won't see significant growth. The future looks miserably bleak. The only person who walks away from this debacle a winner is -- you guessed it -- Prokhorov.

And so it goes.

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