Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson visited Jeremy Lin in the hospital after the point guard’s season-ending injury on opening night (Jeremy Lin/Instagram).

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The Brooklyn Nets’ 2017-18 season, much like Boston’s, was shaken from the very start when starting point guard Jeremy Lin went down with a scary-looking knee injury. Shortly after, it was announced the veteran guard would be sidelined for the rest of the season with a ruptured patella tendon. To discuss the implications of the devastating injury and much more, Sandy Mui, host of the Brooklyn Revolution Podcast, not to mention Brook-Lin.com assignment editor and writer at The Brooklyn Game, graciously joins Loren and Aaron. Particularly, she also pays close attention to the team’s youngsters, D’Angelo Russell, Caris LeVert and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, among others, and some of the veterans exceeding expectations, like DeMarre Carroll. These selections below hit nothing but net:

5:00-5:15: “I think he [D’Angelo Russell] has looked great so far, aside from the fact that he’s struggled a bit with his passing and playmaking in these last couple of games, but we’ve already seen how high his ceiling can potentially be. In the first three games he played, he averaged 21 points, 4.3 points, 7 assists and 1.7 steals.”

9:25-10:50: “I was really heartbroken for Jeremy Lin too. You could see the look on his face after he fell down. He knew that this one was going to be bad…This is terrible news for a guy who only played 36 games last season. And now, he played less than 48 minutes for the entire season…As for the impact on the team, I’d expect, of course, more playing time for the young guys. We’ve already touched on D’Angelo Russell who’s starting at point guard and Lin’s backup, Spencer Dinwiddie, the only player on the roster who plays solely at point guard; he, of course, has to step up. I think Dinwiddie has been pretty impressive so far. As I mentioned, in the Cavs game, he pretty much saved the Nets with that 3 in the final 43 seconds and also the two free throws to seal the deal. Lin, for the season, he’ll have to lead from the sidelines once again.”

13:30-14:00: “Last season, with [head coach Kenny] Atkinson in his first year, [general manager] Sean Marks and him talked a lot about player development and focusing on that as the quote unquote ‘progress’ of the team. Well, I think this season, ‘progress’ is slightly different in that this team expects to finish with more than 20 wins and [is] actually capable of doing so, even without Jeremy Lin.”

16:25-16:50: “The Nets could potentially have one first-rounder and two second-rounders in 2018, and in the process of Sean Marks’ magic, they’ve gotten some significant players in Caris LeVert, DeMarre Carroll and Allen Crabbe. I’ll put a star next to [Isaiah] Whitehead since he’s kind of the new Chris McCullough, alternating back and forth between Long Island and Brooklyn. But not bad for a general manager…am I right?”

19:25-20:40: “Everyone covering the Nets has used the phrase “more than a salary dump” at some point by now to describe Carroll. He really is, yeah. A lot of people questioned how much he’d bring to the Nets at the age of 31, on the older side for the Nets for sure, and he is coming off some disappointing years since his Atlanta days, but he’s really delivered…One moment I wanted to point out was on Friday night against the Knicks, Carroll went down for a few minutes after Michael Beasley hit him in the face – he was grabbing his face for a while – and it was ruled just a common foul, but I was worried about him. And a few minutes later, he still dove into the first row to try to grab a loose ball. That’s exactly the kind of grit the Nets are after, and for a veteran, even things like that are great for the young guys to see.”

28:25-29:00: “I’ve been very impressed with Rondae [Hollis Jefferson]’s shot, and it’s really clear that he worked on it a lot over the offseason. No hitch anymore, of course, and he’s already scoring a lot more, taking a couple more attempts per game than last season. Really if it’s any player so far I say we can get a little ahead of ourselves for this season, it’s Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. He’s still showing defensive capabilities on top of his scoring, with his 1.2 steals and 1.2 blocks per game. Unbelievable. And has anyone talked about his free-throw shooting?”


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Music: “Who Likes to Party” by Kevin MacLeod