The Brooklyn Nets won 20 games this season. Their point differential says they should have won 26. That six-win gap is the largest negative deviation from Pythagorean expectation in the NBA, which means the Nets managed to be significantly worse than a team that was outscored by 819 points over 82 games.
Let that sit for a moment.
The Pythagorean Gap: Losing More Than They Should
Pythagorean win expectation is a simple, reliable tool. You pour in points scored (105.9 per game) and points allowed (115.9), and the formula spits out what your record would look like if wins and losses distributed normally around your quality of play. For Brooklyn, that expected win percentage was .315, roughly 26 wins. Instead they finished at .244, with 20. A minus-10 point differential is already grim. Somehow the Nets found ways to make it grimmer, losing games their underlying margin suggested they should have occasionally stumbled into winning. Their CURSD Luck Index of -65, the lowest in the league, quantifies what the season felt like from the inside: everything that could go wrong went worse.
Close Games: A Perfect Record in the Wrong Direction
Brooklyn went 0-3 in games decided by three points or fewer. That is a small sample, and a three-game ledger does not constitute a meaningful trend in isolation. But the fact that the Nets played only three such games is itself telling. Most teams land in a dozen or more close contests over 82 games. Brooklyn rarely kept games close enough for the outcome to hinge on a final possession. When they did, they lost every time. The 12-29 home record underscores the problem. Even in their own building, the Nets won barely 29 percent of their games. On the road, that number cratered to 19.5 percent. There was no safe harbor.
Shot Quality: Unlucky on Both Ends
This is where the curse sharpens into focus. Brooklyn's offensive effective field goal percentage was 52.0 percent. Their expected eFG%, based on shot location and quality, was 54.5 percent. That minus-2.5 delta means the Nets consistently converted good looks into misses. Meanwhile, their opponents shot 57.1 percent eFG against them despite an expected mark of just 54.6 percent. The same 2.5-point gap, this time tilted against Brooklyn's defense. Opponents hit shots they had no business making. The Nets missed shots they had every right to expect would fall. A combined 5-point swing in effective field goal variance across both ends of the floor is enormous. It is the kind of two-front war that no amount of effort can overcome.
Acknowledging the Obvious
None of this makes the Nets a secretly competent team. A minus-10 per-game point differential reflects a roster that was outmatched most nights. The 105.9 points per game ranked near the bottom of the league's offensive output. The 115.9 allowed was even more damning. Brooklyn's process was bad. Their talent level was bad. This was a rebuilding year, and the construction site looked like it. But even bad teams typically catch a few breaks, win a couple of coin-flip games, watch a few opponent shots rim out. The Nets got none of that. They were bad, and then variance kicked them while they were down.
What Regression Would Look Like
If Brooklyn's shot quality variance reverted to expected levels on both ends, the immediate effect would be roughly five additional points per game shifting in their favor. That alone would push their Pythagorean expectation toward 30 or 31 wins. Add normal close-game variance, even a modest 40 percent win rate in tight contests, and you are looking at a team in the low 30s. Still a lottery team. Still below .500 by a wide margin. But a 32-win team lives in a fundamentally different universe than a 20-win team. One is rebuilding. The other is historically futile.
The Nets were not good this year. They were also not 20-wins bad. The gap between those two truths is where the curse lives, and Brooklyn's Luck Index says no team in the NBA lived there more painfully.