The Nets and the Volatility Index

Can Brooklyn be considered contenders in the Eastern Conference?

Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports

This week on The Crossover, Chris Mannix and Howard Beck dive into the ripple effects of the Robert Williams III injury and how it might impact the Celtics’ ability to “bludgeon” their opponents. Plus, the Heat’s late-season swoon, the raging debate over All-NBA slots, a bizarre feud between Ty Lue and Daryl Morey, and why the Nets with Kyrie Irving back full time (but still no Ben Simmons) are causing Howard to invent the “Volatility Index.”

The following transcript is an excerpt from The Crossover NBA podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.

Chris Mannix: Let’s talk about Brooklyn, a team you wrote about this week. You’re very, very angry Howard at Kyrie Irving, aren’t you?

Howard Beck: Not angry, just someone needs to point out the truth.

CM: All right, you take this part here, because the Nets have lost two of the last three, Kyrie’s first home game of the season was not good, they lost to Charlotte and Irving played poorly. Where do you see the Nets right now? How do you see them amongst the contenders in the conference?

HB: I don’t. And that’s the thing. Listen, in the abstract, if you just said, Hey, here’s a bunch of teams and here’s their two best players. And you said one of them’s got KD and Kyrie, I would say, well, if Kyrie Irving is actually available for most of the season, which he frequently is not—not just this season. KD and Kyrie as a one-two punch is electrifying. And we’ve seen that this season, right? And we’ve seen each of these guys just to have monster games on their own and in tandem. So it’s not to downplay the potency of the Nets with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. It’s not to downplay Kevin Durant, period. That guy still, any given night in the NBA, you could say is the best basketball player on Earth. Kevin Durant wins games by himself sometimes and has been forced to, by the way, to win games by himself far too often this season. 

But I talk about like, the volatility index, right? A fake thing that I just made up in my own head. Maybe one day I’ll actually create it on paper. But the volatility, if you look at all the teams that we would consider contenders because of their talent, and then you consider all the caveats you would put there, the volatility, the Nets have more volatility than anyone, and have all season, right? 

Kyrie Irving can finally play home games. O.K., great, hallelujah. He can play home games so he can now play the remaining seven games as we speak on their schedule. That’ll give them a nice run before the playoffs, of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving together, home and road for the first time all season. Andre Drummond is a starting center for this team; he’s been around for just a month and a half. Seth Curry came in the same trade with Drummond in the Ben Simmons–Harden swap. Those guys are still new to this team. And Seth Curry has been in and out because of injury. They have been dealing with a Nets team, up until now, that has been two different versions of the Nets. There’s the home version with no Kyrie and the road version with Kyrie. They’re still waiting on Ben Simmons. Ben Simmons might get healthy before the end of the season, in which case now you’re plugging in a really important player who has never played a minute or even practiced a minute with this team. And you’re going to plug him in just before the playoffs? Or possibly once the playoffs start? Whenever his back is finally ready? That is a lot of variables, Chris.

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