The Brooklyn Nets announced on Sunday that Kenny Atkinson will be their new head coach starting the 2016-17 season. Now, it's time for the Nets to address the overall team needs heading into the offseason filled with a lot of questions and uncertainties.
According to ESPN, Atkinson will officially become the Nets head coach once the Atlanta Hawks playoff run ends. He will be the sixth coach since the franchise moved to Brooklyn in 2012 following Avery Johnson, P.J. Carlesimo, Jason Kidd, Lionel Hollins and Tony Brown.
He joins Sean Marks, who are both represented by Creative Artists Agency, as the new faces in the rebuilding Nets team. They are tasked to lead Mikhail Prokhorov-owned franchise into the new generation but problems along the way.
The first and main problem are the lack of the first-round draft picks this year until the 2018 season. The Nets famously threw their future away in the Paul Pierce-Kevin Garnett trade from Boston in 2013, including a potential top 3 pick this year.
The next problem is what to do with Brook Lopez and Bojan Bogdanovic. Even though Lopez is an All-Star caliber center, he still has questions about his health. As for Bogdanovic, his inconsistency has been the main hole in his game but he finished the season very well.
However, it's not all bad for Brooklyn as they have several young pieces to develop including swingman Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and power forward Chris McCullough. Their incoming head coach is known for being one of the best in the league when it comes to player development.
"There is nobody better than Kenny at developing players," former NBA coach Rick Adelman told Sports Talk Atlanta. Atkinson also is instrumental for the explosion of "Linsanity" back in 2012 while he was an assistant coach for the New York Knicks and Jeremy Lin has praised Atkinson him for it.
Brooklyn also has an increase in salary cap this summer just like any other NBA team. If the team waives injured point guard Jarrett Jack and players like Wayne Ellington, Shane Larkin and Thomas Robinson opt-out of their deals, the Nets will have an estimated $40 million of cap space.
While it's a long shot that players like Kevin Durant and LeBron James sign with Brooklyn, there are other available free agents this summer. Some of them include Harrison Barnes, Nicolas Batum, Mike Conley, Al Horford and Rajon Rondo.
Watch the video below to know what's next for the Brooklyn Nets according to a couple of basketball analysts.