MarShon, MarShoff

I like MarShon Brooks, because he has randomly capitalized letters in his first name and his game is worth at least a bench position on the All-NBA “What, No, Alright Sure” Shot Selection All-Stars. It was fun to watch him heat up over the last two years, whenever it happened. But here’s a report from ESPN’s Marc Stein and Chad Ford saying that the Nets might be trying to shovel off Brooks to the Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for what would be the No. 26 pick. Unless you’re bullish on Alexey Shved, the T’Wolves need a shooting guard and Brooks sort of fits that position even though he can’t really shoot from farther than the restricted area. With Joe Johnson locked into the starting lineup, Brooks was firmly relegated to backup status, even falling behind Keith Bogans in the rotation because Bogans had a firmer grip on how to fit in and not cause too much trouble. Bogans is presumably off to another team, which means the Nets would essentially be resetting the position, maybe drafting a replacement with one of their latter round picks. (The prudent move given their tight cap situation.)

That rings a little circular, but if the trade is consummated it’ll smell of a classic New Coach move, which is to institute new guys to replace the guys you can live without.  Perhaps it’s worth pointing out that in four games against the Knicks this season—games in which Jason Kidd was also on the court—Brooks played more than ten minutes in just one of them, and didn’t even see any action in the other. I will read way too much into this, but what’s a better scouting report than playing against someone and seeing how he’s treated by his coach/teammates? From which Kidd might have deduced, “This guy is like junior J.R.” We’ll wait and see, but here’s a highlight video from our buddies at The Brooklyn Game to remind us of all that off-kilter magic.