While this post may come across as stating the obvious, it’s worth noting that one of the main consequences of the Nets landing the third pick in the draft is that, barring some kind of blockbuster trade, Devin Harris is going to be the Nets’ point guard this coming season.
Logic seemed to dictate that despite the talk that Devin Harris and John Wall could have coexisted in the same backcourt, the Nets would have explored trading Harris if they landed the number one pick to make room for the Kentucky point guard. This is clearly a moot point now, and I don’t know what to think about that.
On one hand, I think trading Harris this summer was a lose-lose proposition. His value is probably as low as it’s going to get, despite showing flashes of being the type of dynamic player he was two seasons ago with Vince Carter in the backcourt. Harris gets injured too often, relies too much on drawing contact around the hoop to get his points (ergo leading to more injuries), doesn’t shoot well and reportedly rarely demonstrated leadership abilities when it was clearly *his* team last year. But then you look at his 08-09 season, specifically the first part of it, and you have to wonder if Harris can match that type of production again if there’s another scorer on the floor to draw the attention of defenders. And that’s what would have made trading Harris so maddening – because they would have received spare parts or bad contracts in return for a player that is hypothetically not that far away from finding it again.
In an interview in Russia, new owner Mikhail Prokhorov said he was not disappointed by losing out on the Wall sweepstakes because the Nets had Harris. And while I have to praise Prokhorov for sticking up for his current guys and being an optimist, it’s easy to question whether or not the Nets would have been better in the long term having the opportunity to select Wall and moving Harris. But with that situation now being very unlikely, the Nets and Nets fans need to start operating as if Harris is there point guard now and in the foreseeable future.
