The Brooklyn Nets must put the right players around Cam Thomas, to become a star

The Brooklyn Nets must put the right players around Cam Thomas, to become a star

coming up if the Brooklyn Nets are ready to move in a young Direction then cam Thomas is already ready to be that star how they need to improve around him so he can be successful going forward we dive in coming up next you are locked on Nets your daily Brooklyn Nets podcast part of the locked on podcast Network your team every day [Music] Rook yo I yes my friends it is the lockon Nets podcast right here in the lockon podcast Network it’s your team the Brooklyn Nets every single day he’s Doug Nory I’m Adam marbit we thank you as always for making us your first listen of the day we are 100% free on all those great platforms and let you know today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel make every moment more right now new customers can get $150 in bonus Bets with any winning $5 bet that’s 150 bucks with any winning $5 bet visit fanduel.com locked on to get started and Doug to the Delight of certainly a segment of the Brooklyn Nets fans we’re talking about why cam Thomas is the player in Brooklyn who needs help around him so he can maximize his value yeah we could be trending that direction here I mean I know Cam’s been sort of a divisive guy uh among the Nets faithful here for a couple years now part of that probably has to do with his style part of that has to do with just how like Nets have handled him and like sort of being non-committal themselves to what he is as a player which I think sometimes doesn’t help players in the eyes of fans right it’s like well the the team doesn’t seem to fully believe in you then how can we fully believe in you and we’ll pick apart your game too but if you look back at his season last year framed in certain kinds of context which we’ll go through here in a second I mean he was ranking right among them like among the very best names in the game by like things that are just standard NBA metrics I I’m like not diving too deep here and you’ll be pretty impressed with the list I’m about to give but in general like would you agree with that like the Nets like if the Nets had framed the cam Thomas thing differently like the the league might have already framed it differently but it it’s almost like their non-committal piece to him maybe has made like the the The Wider acceptance slower than it probably should have been I yeah I agree that the wider acceptance of Cam Thomas as being maybe one of the should be talked about as hey on the verge of being one of the elite talents in certain categories that probably is a slower moving train than it should be even though I also think I would have loved to have seen cam Thomas play a lot more games and start a lot more games early in his career I was thinking about how it’s also okay to say while the Nets do have not done a great job development developing players all the time to sit here right now and say that a late first round pick remember that like just because he has shown it on the court now it doesn’t change when he was drafted we felt like the Nets maybe got a bit of a steal to time but okay he played in 67 games played in 57 games and then in his third year as a player who is still just 22 years old he emerged whether we agree that you know they did everything they could to help him along the way in year three at 22 now going into his fourth year he’s here so I I want to I want to give the Nets some wiggle room here and just say hey ultimately he’s still really young he can still be your star he can still be the player you build around going forward we’re going to talk about that so maybe it doesn’t matter that you could have seen more of him sooner I don’t know if he would have taken a seismically larger Leap Forward by going into year four than than year three say does that does that is that somewhat reasonable sense there oh yeah and actually I wasn’t even pushing back against like that it was all wrong necessarily it does seem crazy to look back on it and be like he didn’t even start 15 games last year right I know that’s the weird part the the the rookie year you’re okay with it’s year two where you go not even like it doesn’t starts so for sure right yeah like so yeah 66 games 51 stars um well I not even pushing back on like how they handled it I’m mostly pushing back on how it was handled is what frames has framed the discussion weirdly around him that’s all like that that there was that because the because there seemed to be like a push and pull around like what he was as a player and how committed they were to actually playing him it made it very difficult to come to any firm conclusions or at the minimum it just made him more of a polarizing player because it was like if he started every game and you lived with some of the downside I actually think the conversation would have been very different around him now it’s that it wasn’t like that and then there was just like that that left an opening for if you weren’t so into like what he was bringing on the court the opening was like easily there for you to walk through because the team was doing it themselves that’s all like it was the team was the team was signaling it themselves so if you weren’t into it it was like well how wrong could I be the team doesn’t even want to play and and then this seismic shift right to your point averaging over 16 minutes a year ago to over 31 minutes 11 points a game to 22 and a half points a game or like all these things all of the sudden it’s like this explosion from year two to year three from we don’t know maybe the Nets don’t know maybe the league doesn’t know too oh my goodness maybe we all should have known and that speaks to the larger NBA narrative right and by the end of it like the it was all it was all off like he was given full rain to like take as many shots as he wants so I don’t think by the end or even by the middle of this season I think that was kind of over yes um like he was given all the leash in the world to just shoot as many times as he want like he had a really high usage percentage was 18 shots a game like so it the debate on round whether or not they would were willing to like turn over a lot of shot creating possibilities to him like that is no longer yeah year was no there was no longer discussion about it they did offer him enormous latitude on how much he was able to shoot when he was in the game it was just mostly like the frame up the framing of it leading up to that like it took a long time and for some people it took way too long and for some people it probably was the right around of time I I think that’s all it but I have um I don’t know is that like a good way to encapsulate sort of like where we stand with Cam now because I have a pretty interesting I have a pretty interesting group to put him in here oh of course yeah it was you know let cam cook from day one there was that segment go well okay he’s a rookie let’s let have him develop a little bit here and then once you cross that threshold you feel like okay and now here we are and the real question becomes how is the organization how did the do organizations see it as well right did the free reign they gave him ises that all add up here and now when you put him in the group of players Doug is going to give you you go okay Pro probably exactly where he should be and maybe the ascending talent that the Nets need if they want to be successful in this pseudo rebuild that we keep describing all right so this list is crazy right if you look at it this way because this actually factors in that there are like players on bad teams that are allowed to you know take shots and do stuff as well so if you just sort by points per minute right and points per minute kind of the reason I take it away from points per game is because like he those games that he wasn’t accounting for the games that like he didn’t start and played limited minutes so that’s where like the points per game so if you if you boil it down to points per minute like just points per minute scored while on the court this year I did just section us off like he had to have played more than 60 games just to reduce some of these other guys that were in there although that does take off guys like it really only took off like lamelo and Joel embiid and and uh maybe Donovan Mitchell too so anyway when you look at it that way cam this is this is nuts cam sits 15th overall in points per minute this past season here’s the list of the guys that are above him right that that played the requisite amount of games Luca SGA Giannis Brunson Steph joic Booker Tatum Anthony Edwards dearon Fox KD Durant LeBron Zion Williamson Victor wanyama cam Thomas 11 of those 14 guy 11 of the 14 guys above him were all NBA like that was basically the whole all NBA team right there’s only there’s 15 total guys on all NBA you know wemy is gonna be on all NBA almost for sure next year if he plays the right amount of games Zion probably had an outside chance to make it and then you get Darren Fox and there’s probably some people I mean if the kings were a little better the Guard the guard position was just super deep this year with guys like Brunson like making an Ascension and um and like SGA and guys like this overall though I mean those are the stars those are the stars in the league and yeah you want to say okay well points per points per minute given a Long Leash lots of guys could do that they can’t they can’t like it’s just or or they can’t or like it’s just not going to be set up for them to do it and so I know like the picking apart probably narrative around it could be like I I know what like the other side of this could be I filter by the most important thing in the game which is scoring points yeah and just gave you the list of who does it on a per minute basis and the list is overwhelmingly the stars in the league and I just know most people wouldn’t put cam anywhere close to this the rest of this group uh if you were like start to slice and dice it different ways no I’m sure if we start talking you know top you know the top 100 list and we do all those things right when when will cam Thomas start to sniff that type of conversation when he’s specifically really great at least right now in this one category I suppose we’ll continue talking about what it means for this team going forward and how they’re going to May construct the roster if they want to keep cam Thomas and his talent in mind inside of that list though that top 15 I think you would say what outside of wemi everybody else playoff team I think every one of those other players is on a playoff team might be might be the case outside of the Spurs possibly maybe and the the Pelicans play in but not play off yeah yeah the Pelicans Yeah Yeah well yeah they were yeah well he was hurt but they they made the playoffs um yeah every every every oh no Steph the the the Warriors didn’t make go and I guess like Steph has enough in his bank you know bank account right point being like the caveat some the caveat some would that the next category that we’ll discuss here in a moment is okay so he did do this production level which nobody can just do even on bad teams but the team wasn’t good so is it a product of Cam Thomas shoots more and the team doesn’t do well no that’s not the case let’s explain why they need to improve the team around him so the top 15 scoring per minute value actually trans translates to wins for this roster cam Thomas is doing his part who needs to step up and how can Brooklyn help him we’ll talk about that in just one moment all right it’s winner take all time in the NBA and the NHL as well FanDuel is giving you a chot to win big on your own right now new customers over at FanDuel GNA get $150 in bonus bets any winning $ five bet it’s 150 bucks you bet on spreads you bet on money lines you bet on player props it’s so much more you can slice and dice these player props every which way it’s crazy how many ways you can get it on FanDuel and it’s all there for you just got to visit fanduel.com lockon you’re going to make every playoff shot count fand America’s number one sports book all right so as We Roll Along today on the locked on Net’s episode talking about of course one cam Thomas and the idea that he in fact is maybe the budding offensive Superstar talent that the Nets need to have here do you agree there I dovetail at the end of segment number one saying there’s no need to debate whether cam Thomas is doing his part or whether or not cam Thomas being productive 18 shots a game this past season should be looked at as yes but the team can’t be successful if he is given that volume of shooting I think we look everywhere else now on this roster including male Bridges and Cameron Johnson and all the other players that maybe didn’t live up to expectations this past season cam Thomas did his job and this is the first time he was given the chance to he came through massively now you need to say what does he need so that these games and these performances don’t go by the wayside which by the way happened a lot this past year great games from cam not great games from the team overall this is where it gets harder because this is where the anti-am group will come in and be like well it’s empty calories it’s you know points and losses you know he scores more the team loses these like I would call them like sasi ridiculous debates because one I think the efficiency was like mostly fine he gets to the line a lot too which really helps the true shooting uh climb up there the problem with evaluating it now is that the Nets it’s like you can’t evaluate it because everyone else sucked like and so you needed the season where everybody played well and then what was cam Thomas’s value relative to right the way you know other teams were queued in like so there’s a couple things right so one is he’s the only guy that ever saw a double on the the whole season from another team like like no one else even can the other teams didn’t even consider doubling anybody else on this team ever now they didn’t do it to came they didn’t Blitz and trap him exclusively but I mean I think starting with that Atlanta Hawks game was the first time we really saw it and it really threw him off um more as the season went on we saw teams really dig in on him and try to stop him at the point of attack because they were like well he’s the only guy that can do anything no one Bridges never saw a double and forget it after that um like no one ever saw any double and no one ever saw any double teams so like just from that standpoint like other teams sign okay well this is some we do have to sort of handle this a little bit if we handle this we handle our business with him it might be kind of a total WP with the rest of the team so that that’s the one thing the other thing too is it is hard to evaluate the wins and losses because legit nobody else could score like they they couldn’t no one on this team could score and if when no one else can score then you are just like how can you really evaluate it and I I I that’s the the time where it’s like I I really kind of take it out of like you can’t put the blame on him for not winning the game when he scores when no one else does anything Bridges had a massive regression off the second half of the last year yeah and that was it like that was the whole story dwy never shot Schroeder was fine when he came over they don’t even have another guy who can dribble yeah after those guys and so like what how can we ever possibly really evaluate the winning piece of this when honestly everyone else is way way way under under performing whatever like a real basketball team would do no and you would never do like I mean I don’t know name any other sport name any other position or stay inside the NBA any other team when player X is performing at a high level and The Supporting Cast is not meeting expectations you never look at the guy that’s doing it you always look at everybody else and I think you know we talked about this on the last episode around teams pursuing free agents and liking veterans over young players because you know what the veteran is I think for a lot of it can be looking at C and saying well we don’t really know what he is you know fully what’s he going to be we talk about cam Thomas three four years from now what is the discussion going to look like is he going on the track of being a player that starts to facilitate a little bit more can at least be a road bump on defense and then just becomes an elite scorer becomes a 22 23 25 point a night guy with consistency and helps his team win games so four years from now we may look back and talk about how for the first five six years of Cam Thomas’s career he was one of those dudes that could score the basketball and never had this Supporting Cast and people are always hesitant I think to give that right you need another year and another year and there’s something that’s at least not there’s something justifiable about that this is year one that cam Thomas really was given the opportunity and showed he’s capable of doing it if you look at this team now then though and you’re the Brooklyn Nets whether it’s about taking a little bit of a longer view or not he’s coming up on a big could extend him opportunity do you think the Brooklyn Nets want or feel compelled to make a adjustment to this roster to better understand what cam Thomas’s true franchise value is yeah that’s tough they they clearly do I mean this the team is not optimized around his skill set at all now whether or not he’s the kind of guy the team in general who could be the other way go like whether you because like okay so the the problem with Cam is that he is you know essentially an a shooting guard probably by definition um and therefore needs to work with like probably a primary ball handler but he’s also under size so that’s going to cause you issues but I mean like this is where like the Simmons thing was was always the dream here it’s like hey Simmons actually would pair really well here as sort of like a primary on ball guy and then working into an offense that had cam around plus you could like make up for a lot of the defensive stuff like Simmons actually was a clear match they need some kind of connector I’ve thrown out like Josh giddy as a guy I know no one wants to hear because he was the disaster in the playoffs but like guys like this who don’t need the ball ton can act as connectors right like can actually facilitate some stuff getting into actions where like you can just get the guy the other guy into into the plagues you don’t want to take a ton of shots guys like that actually would really benefit I think cam but they just the Nets aren’t built to like kind of bring guys like this in so we could be looking at another season of clunky pain around his skill set compared to what everyone else has because shuder he’s okay but because if you look at this list that one of the problem too is like if you look at that list of guys that I just gave above cam I mean his assist rate is by far the lowest of that group I it’s not even close and that’s like where you get the drop off of sort of like whole game like holistic game Effectiveness into just scoring because like it’s funny the guy that’s right below him on this list that probably is a little like him is Colin Sexton right and it’s funny that they live in the same range because it’s like decent scoring low assists and that is like a thing that clearly has to improve so you could either say they Nets improve around him and they add more guys that they maybe fit his style or stylistically he has to change in order to ball distribute more and just become more of like a well-rounded like offensive player like that Beyond just the scoring so I don’t know it’s a little chicken or egg but that’s a problem the Nets kind of do face with his skill set coming up the players to fit around C or Cam’s adjustments to fit around players we’ll talk about that and the young core that he can develop with this next season coming up in just one moment all right so as we round out the lockon Nets episode always remind you get us on X Doug nor adarre and of course YouTube podcast we appreciate it our journey continues even if the Brooklyn Nets give up usually when the season ends 82 games that’s not our job now you mentioned that last thing there before we talk about the young guys you Noah Clowney I think being key among them we kind of talked about at the end of the season him and Nicholas Claxton and that’s what starts to reframe what you maybe make choices around his free agency and bringing him back it’s the same thing I think when you look at cam Thomas and saying well who are the young players here are we going to as we’ve discussed trade Dorian finy Smith get a 2024 first round draft pick potentially and do we look at guys that either because the Josh giddy thing I want to get back to but players that either put cam Thomas More into the into the number two pure pure shooter pure scorer and someone takes away the table setting responsibilities or do you go through a growing pain season and say if we want you to be the core one of the core centerpieces of this franchise then it’s going to be another rough year where we’re going to have to do a lot of work as an organization saying there were probably more assists out there for you but we know the talent and the complimentary pieces aren’t fully in place yet because I think we’ll start having that discussion too how many assists are left on the table because it just isn’t the right set of pieces for Thomas to drive and kick for cam Thomas to have those open looks created off of double teams and some of the pressure defenses will put on him yeah it’s funny like if you look at his assist rate it’s basically in line per minute with this whole career except that if you looked at the assist rate over the course of the season it’s it climbed month by month and then kind of and then kind of dipped at the end like kind of fell back to to Earth At the end also too again we mentioned no one on this team could hit any shots so that’s going to affect your assist rate I think the ey test for us or at least for me I think we both said it at different points of the season the eye test definitely gave you the sense that he was making more reading react plays um and you know one he he started dealing with the Trap quicker and because that was a real real rough stin for him at the beginning but as soon as he started to recognize the Trap quicker and the blitz quicker he was able to get out of that in in better ways so that was a good thing I think there’s plenty of times and I’m just saying this for like from memory there’s plenty of times over the course of the year when we’re kind of talking about Gam games like tweeting about games that I was very high on some of the decision making he was making in terms of like getting into the paint kicking driving kick and stuff like that so I want to believe that that part is there that some of those assist numbers were driven down just by everyone not really kind of holding up their end of the bargain he also isn’t really all the way there yet he’s not like running pick and roll he’s not running like Rim running lob threat stuff like he’s not like we did we see like him and claxon Twan game at all all not really right so that is the stuff that doesn’t pass the it test because he really wasn’t doing it that often now Jord Fernandez comes in maybe they want to run some new sets like this and that’s like what they work to I think we’ll see kind of early on if there’s a if there’s um a push toward that kind of thing but really we’d have to see at least some pick and roll from him yeah like and and I just not sure like that was something that we really saw and the Nets admittedly didn’t seem to run much of a system all season long the Nets didn’t really have anything happening the funny so and it’s you know you mentioned Claxton obviously free agency you know pending that he would return but it is funny because a player like him as you say well it’s not like cam Thomas is really getting into those sets to do the thing that Claxton is capable of doing the hard part is Claxton doesn’t do other things right so in my mind when you talk about Josh giddy earlier it’s it’s say listen would the Nets take a flyer on that you know under $9 million capit I I I’d be interested would take a flyer for a year to see if that could pan out a little bit I would also we mentioned the other day about the Jazz talking about what they were looking at this offseason and maybe wanting to move Collins I bring up the idea of like a model of his type of ilk where it’s like if I drive and want to dump off to a player that has some driveability at the basket of his own accord that’s like the other issue here male Bridges we say this all the time Mel Bridges isn’t getting through anybody or around anybody right cam Johnson that’s not really in his bag Dorian finny Smith go down the list of this roster so and this isn’t make all the excuses in the world about why cam Thomas’s numbers could have been so much better you said it he still has development to make here he’s 22 years old but I can I can point to those players and then go right I could probably point out three plays a game minimum where when he was penetrating in the paint if you have not a Nick Claxton but a player X if you have not a male Bridges but a player y those little dump off passes and the opportunities off of that are even more successful than just saying the driving kicks and finding open shooters that can’t knock shot so that part of it is really interesting to me to think about going forward here and ultimately maybe to think about Noah Clowney like that becomes really fascinating now how does Noah Clowney a player that is the next step or evolution of what we thought Nicholas Claxton could become offensively but clearly is never going to be that could make a big difference for cam Thomas this year yeah look and like those guy like the guys that were talking about like adding that would like maybe just um Elevate his game a little bit like there it’s not like these guys are just all over the place and like the Nets just are doing a bad job not finding no else is in the market just us taking what we need here making it all work it’s mostly like these like sort of like guys who can do a little enough on their own can distribute and a little bit and like and and be able to like sort of figure maybe like people will say okay maybe trendon Watford can be this guy right like this guy like just like a little sort of secondary point guard is kind of stuff can do enough to stay on the court can has like decent Court Vision right and can get to the basket if he needs to like in sort of like grenade situations near the end of the clock like stuff like this or like you play with just like a big who is just really good at like high screen pick and pop kind of like you know shenon or something like that like guys like this would really unlock cam a lot but I mean we’re these guys it’s just like these guys don’t grow on trees so I I don’t have a lot I mean the ler things interesting to me but I guess but the um it’s not like there’s just it’s not like there’s you know 500 of these guys out there and Shawn marks has a blind spot it’s just that it’s just that they just they just aren’t really that prevalent and so because I’m no notice that I’m not even talking about playing with like pure point guard guys like Jaylen Brunson guys you know even even even Shay guys like this like you know some of the reason why you know like the giddy thing wasn’t working at the end right it’s like maybe he’s just like a little out of place for that team and so this is all to say there’s a different kind of guy that would work here with Cam that I just the Nets just don’t really have right now and like look Simmons comes back healthy like maybe that’s the guy but I just don’t have any it in there you gotta slip in the at least once he’s still on the team he’s still on the team I don’t know post a workout video so we know he’s gonna come back 100% but like um one phase one of the off season is complete the workouts are being posted that’s I mean like you could set your clock you can set your clock to the workout videos um so or the workout posts but yeah anyway he be he would be the guy but I don’t any faith he’s going to actually be back there’s something in there around like Groundhogs Day when it comes to Ben Simmons workout videos in the offseason it’s just you know sign of six more months of losing basketball for the Brookland Nets ultimately my my my final thought on it is when we think about this upcoming season and kind of our philosophy about what the organization should do well you mentioned Watford I like I was high on him coming into the year then I cooled off a little bit because I wasn’t seeing a lot of him and that kind of picked up again the nice way to think about it if you reclaim some draft capital or whatever and you think about 2025 is yeah great take this year Clowney Watford cam Thomas and you know Jaylen Wilson coming off the bench but he’s a less that that athleticism in the requisite skills you want to complement Cam that doesn’t really factor in but okay develop with these guys and if we get another young player develop that means probably losing basketball but probably also building on something that you think you can carry forward the other way of doing it looking at free agents or looking at possible trades is again where we run this risk of bringing guys that give you that sample size with Cam but then also so ooh let’s not get crazy here we don’t want to accidentally start winning too many basketball games so the agenda serving here for the organization may as much as anything have impacted how cam Thomas has been developed and how they perceive him going forward you know an episode for a later date not to run long maybe other teams look at cam Thomas and the Brooklyn Nets and go well yeah in Brooklyn obviously he’s going to struggle look at the rest of the roster but if we bring him to us with our Pure point guard all of a sudden he has a real value so there’s there’s certainly a level of intrigue here about the net plans and what cam Thomas is relative to the NBA no true word spoken okay we’re going to get out of here I knew I knew it as always like as always we say the Nets didn’t hold up their end of the bargain that’s right but we are five days a week all through the playoffs all through the draft talking cam Thomas talking Bridges talking what the offseason plans could be might be should be it’s all going to be there you got to make sure you’re subscribed over lockon Nets on YouTube make sure you subscribe to lockon Nets where you listen the podcast We Are The Music Makers we are the dreamers of Dreams why that is Bill Wonka Oh Billy one of the alltime great poets we’ll be back again tomorrow talking more Brooklyn that’s basketball basketball basketball basketball basketball basketball basketball basketball yeah

Cam Thomas had a big leap season last year, especially when it came to the scoring. He put the ball in the basket among the best in the league. But the right pieces weren’t in place around him, something Sean Marks and the Brooklyn Nets must fix.

The Locked on Nets guys talk about Cam Thomas’s season, the strides he made, and what the team should do to make sure they are in the best place to possibly build around him.

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