Nets’ Harris is no average Joe
OKLAHOMA CITY — With just two weeks to go until the trade deadline — and Joe Harris an impending free agent — Nets general manager Sean Marks has a decision to make on the budding guard. Deal or no deal. Do the Nets keep a 26-year-old poster child for their vaunted player development beyond the Feb. 8 deadline, and risk losing him for nothing this summer? Or do they cash in an increasingly valuable asset while they can?
“It’s something I don’t really think about a whole lot, personally. It’s just the nature of the NBA where you’ve just got to try to focus on what you can control,” Harris told The Post. “I’ve experienced the other side of it when I was in Cleveland. I got traded the same day I had surgery on my foot, so there’s definitely a business.
“At the end of the day, you can’t really get caught up in worrying about all that stuff. It’ll drive you crazy for sure. You’ve just got to live with the ambiguity. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the league, and you just do your part and focus on what you can control.”
Harris has surely experienced that other side of it. After having seasonending foot surgery on Jan. 5, 2016, he promptly was traded to Orlando and waived.
By the time Harris arrived in Brooklyn last season, he was just trying to salvage his career. But since then he’s taken to the Nets’ player development like a drowning man to a life raft, improving his allaround game. He’ll come into Tuesday’s tilt at Oklahoma City averaging 10.3 points on 47.7 percent shooting and 39.0 percent from 3-point range, all career-highs.
“I’m just trying to be as efficient as possible,” Harris said. “My job is just to create spaces on the floor, allow our ball-handlers to facilitate and have room to work and knock down shots when they’re there, and be opportunistic when you have driving lanes. But really my job is just to create space for everybody else, [and] play tough on the defensive end, and rebound the basketball.”
Harris has cracked double-figures in six straight games, just one off his career high. He’s averaged 12.1 points on 53.9 percent shooting in his past 10 games, including 20-of-40 from deep in that span.
He’s also becoming more than just a long-range gunner, evidenced by a career-best 106.4 defensive rating. And he’s learning to put the ball on the floor, already hitting 23 baskets that required at least three dribbles, after making just seven all last season.
“The player development here has been huge,” Harris said. “Last year I was primarily a shooter. Occasionally I’d put the ball on the deck, but not as much as I have this year. ... People were going to be more cognizant of you coming in trying to shoot the ball, and they’re going to defend you that way, so you need to be able to make plays when guys are running you off the line.
“That was stuff our player development staff focused on with me in the offseason, and even now when we’re working doing our skill development … there’s definitely an emphasis put on making plays if the shot’s taken away, whether that’s a one-dribble pull-up or getting to the rim, finishing or making the right pass, making the right decision.”
Earning $1.5 million, Harris is the quintessential sell-high candidate that shooting-starved, capconscious teams are taking notice of before the deadline. He could easily earn triple that — and perhaps even quadruple that — in June. But will he do it in Brooklyn?
“He’s really becoming a complete player,” coach Kenny Atkinson said. “Last year, we’d get him out for defense, [thinking] we have to get somebody else out there if it was a defensive matchup. Now there’s no fear, putting him on anybody, putting him on wings. … He’s just an all-around improved player. He’s not just known as a shooter now. He’s developed in the whole game. It’s great to see.”