Cam Johnson (and Dennis Schröder’s son) get real about Brooklyn Nets embracing rebuild

On a recent podcast appearance, Cam Johnson opened up about what it’s like to play for a team embracing the long-term

The cat is officially out of the bag, the illusion is over: The Brooklyn Nets are rebuilding.

For the final stragglers who didn’t — or didn’t want to — believe it following the future-conscious trades GM Sean Marks made over the summer, he sent an unambiguous message by agreeing to trade Dennis Schröder to the Golden State Warriors on December 14.

The trade was finalized the next day, December 15, the first day when players signed this past offseason were eligible to be traded; that includes the injured De’Anthony Melton, who Brooklyn took back as workable salary in addition to the second-rounders they gained. In other words, the Nets traded their lead ball-handler having a career-season for a team exceeding (low) expectations at the very, very first chance.

That’s not speculation, rumors, or odds handed down from Las Vegas. That is the Brooklyn Nets saying it with their chest, and perhaps the psychological toll of that statement weighed on the team when they looked lifeless in a 29-point (but worse than that) loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers on December 16. It was the first true embarrassment in a season that had been devoid of them, to some surprise.

Dennis Schröder, with the help of his son Dennis Jr., twisted the knife just a bit further in the next day. In his introductory presser with Golden State, Schröder relayed his son’s reaction to the news: ‘We lucky, now it’s a good team at least.”

It’s all in good fun, but as only the brutal honesty of a kindergartner can do, Dennis Jr. illuminated that the Nets, for now, are a way station within the NBA. His father may have enjoyed living in Brooklyn, even being a Net, but from a competitive standpoint, this is not the place to be, at least for a couple years. Though everybody understands why, that’s not the easiest pill to swallow; you play to win the game, after all.

Nobody has to contend with this more than the players still on the roster, especially oft-rumored trade target Cam Johnson, who went on this week’s episode of The Young Man and The Three, JJ Redick’s ex-podcast now hosted by Tommy Alter and occasionally, Sue Bird.

The full episode can be found right below, and it’s worth a listen in full if you have the time. Johnson remains one of the NBA’s most engaging public speakers, and the trio discuss a whole range of basketball topics, including what it’s like to play on a rebuilding team…

That’s likely the most relevant topic for Nets fans, some of whom may be rooting for their team to lose each given night. However, they must admire the continued resilience of their team, a quality championed by none other than Johnson, who knows his time in Brooklyn may be coming to an end. Yet, that uncertainty didn’t stop him from dropping 33/10/6 in a victory over the Toronto Raptors on Thursday night, just after his podcast appearance dropped…

“There’s a lot I could say on this topic [of playing for a rebuilding team]. There’s a ton. Being in the middle of it, I don’t know how much I’d say on it right now,” said Johnson, lingering on those last two words as he broke the fourth wall.

“But if I could just speak generally, taking myself out of the situation: The thing that pushes a lot of success in team sports, from my limited experience, is buy-in and pride in what you’re doing. The best way to achieve success on a team-level is when that buy-in and pride is at all-time highs, when it’s peaking. Because that’s when the camaraderie — that’s when everything starts to flow — the synergy, and you’re able to play your best ball as a team. There’s a lot that gets in the way of it on a professional level, and one of those things can be uncertainty of your future, whether it’s yourself getting traded, your teammates getting traded, anything like that. And those little shreds of doubt can be difficult for teams to overcome.”

Johnson recorded his appearance with Bird and Alter in between the Cleveland and Toronto games. Perhaps that’s why he spoke in the past tense when he did get specific on Brooklyn’s start to the season, which can now be distinctly broken up into pre-Schröder-trade and post-Schröder-trade sections.

“Maybe our record could be better, but our team energy and direction was definitely headed in a positive manner.”

That was near the sum total of Johnson’s comments on these specific Brooklyn Nets, though he threw in a couple more compliments on the early stages of culture-building on Jordi Fernández’s efforts.

However, later in the discussion, Alter asked Johnson how players view organizations that ask them to endure a long-term rebuild. (2028 was the arbitrary target year for contention he gave.) There’s no indication that the Nets are going to attempt to execute such a plan — in fact there’s been some noise around the opposite — but Johnson did provide a relevant answer.

“It just seems so circumstantial, it seems so — almost whimsical. Hard to sign up for that … I guess the answer lies somewhere in the middle. You want to put your team in the best position to win, but you want to do it immediately. As a player, you want to compete now. I don’t want to say, “Oh, we’re gonna be pretty good in about 2-3 years.’”

This is what Johnson and his fellow veterans like Dorian Finney-Smith — who made one hell of a winning play on Thursday with a late block — are going through right now, though they’re certainly more comfortable explaining it on a podcast than in a presser. And in a different way, this is what the fringe-rotation players on Brooklyn are dealing with as well, as Johnson also explained that consistent losing could be a threat to their careers.

While Johnson’s full discussion with Bird and Alter is linked above, his next opportunity to go out and win a ball-game for the Nets — to build a winning streak! — comes on Saturday evening at the Barclays Center. The Nets will take on the Utah Jazz at 7:30 p.m. ET.