Brooklyn’s Next Nets: So, is Drew Timme a real-deal NBA player?

This is March.

Well technically, the calendar just turned to April, but this is no April Fool’s Day. In this long, winding road of a season that will assuredly end with the Brooklyn Nets having the NBA’s sixth-worst record, our last plot point is perhaps the most random.

Is Drew Timme an NBA player?

Unlike the other G League finds that have exceeded expectations in Brooklyn this season, namely Tosan Evbuomwan and Tyrese Martin, Timme arrives with a pedigree. He is one of the all-time great players in Gonzaga’s storied program, and though he never won a National Championship in school, his 301 March Madness points rank sixth all-time.

And now, to begin his NBA career at age 24, he’s averaging 13/6/2 over his first three games, capping off another successful month of March.

“I tell you what, I love March,” said Timme at his introductory presser. “I have a 50-point game in March, I get a call-up in March, my brother just got his first offer this morning. The month of March is doing good things for the Timme household.”

That 50-point game Timme is referencing happened a couple weeks ago with the G League’s Long Island Nets, and it may have been the push needed for Brooklyn to sign him to a (non-guaranteed) two-year contract…

Is Timme’s continued success in his favorite month a sign of things to come? Or is he simply another late-season opportunist, a fresh, motivated face feasting on the opportunity only a team already eliminated from playoff contention can grant?

Timme’s potential role in the NBA seems clear: an offensively minded, undersized backup center who can help lead offensively slanted bench units. To do this, he’s going to have to shoot the 3-pointer. Contrary to popular belief, most playable NBA centers don’t need to — look at Brooklyn’s two bigs.

But Timme, who shot just 19-of-76 from deep in his college career, has to be able to pick-and-pop and play in a 5-out offense, hitting cutters and wheeling into handoffs. He knows this, and his career G League average of 35.7%, albeit on middling volume, is a step in the right direction.

“I mean, I’ve been working on my three for a good four years,” he said when introduced. “You can shoot a million reps in practice, but it’s totally different when you step out on that court, you know? So just getting comfortable and confident and then also, you know, [Long Island Head Coach] ‘Mu’ [Mfon Udofia] being like, ‘Shoot the ball. I see you shoot it all the time.’ He’ll give that confidence to me … And I was like, ‘you know what? F it, I’ll let it fly.’ And you know, it’s paid off so far, so hopefully it can continue.”

In fact, his final points in that 50-point game was on a three and it won the game.

Brooklyn even ran a couple designed plays out of timeouts — flare screens at that — for Timme to get a three in their win over Dallas. He cashed the first one…

Timme will never shoot 40% from deep, but defenses have to guard him. That’ll increase his value in “delay” and “5 slot” offenses; picture a big man trailing the play, catching the ball, and getting into dribble hand-off action or hitting a cutter to the rim, that sort of thing. If his matchup has to be up on the ball, boom, that means the paint is open.

It’ll also open up his funky driving game, which he can turn into quasi-post-ups. Timme getting buckets like this was never in question…

One question we likely won’t see a definite answer to in Brooklyn’s final six games is how Timme plays in the short-roll.

As he says, “I think I’m a little different than a traditional 5, a little more passing and creativity with my game. I might not be the best lob threat around, but I can impact the game in other ways, you know?”

Indeed, Timme hit this little floater off a D’Angelo Russell pass against Dallas, but teams are not often showing two defenders to any of Brooklyn’s ball-handlers, though Russell had already hit four threes by this point…

The Dallas native averaged over four assists per game in his last season at Gonzaga, but many of those came off of his post-ups, slowly grinding his way to the basket until help arrived. Timme can make the right pass in those situations, but, given how athletic and physical NBA centers are, teams will be content to guard him 1-on-1 in those situations. If he can both hit floaters and really pass in 4-on-3 situations, in addition to a stable 3-point shot and offensive rebounding — all reasonable possibilities — Timme can be a useful backup center.

That is, if he can survive on defense. Yes, he blocked Anthony Davis in isolation in his third NBA game…

But his overall play on that end has been mixed at best. It’s not the 1-on-1 scenarios that are worrisome, it’s covering ground.

His performance against the Washington Wizards, to that end, was not good. In fact, it was very bad. Very, very, bad…

His childhood teammate Jalen Wilson is too quick to scurry out of help position in that play, but Timme takes far too long to hedge and recover. Then, he’s caught in between hedging and switching, perhaps just confused rather than too slow to keep up. But between those plays and an eventual switch that turns into a driving bucket for Washington, you see the worry.

It’s tough to survive as a true center in an NBA defense if you’re slow, vertically challenged, and not absolutely gigantic; Timme is attempting to do just that, and it’s the most important part of his game to keep an eye on.

I think Drew Timme has a chance. He has to simply survive on defense, not even be good, and the offensive skills he needs to hone all seem within reach. Does he have a great chance to carve out a bona fide NBA career? Perhaps not, but it is a real chance nonetheless.

It might be worth betting on a guy who turned himself into a truly elite college player, and then quickly found a way to become a big-time G League player. He’ll try hard, throw his weight around, and certainly won’t back down from a challenge.

He’s also injected some life into a Brooklyn Nets team that appeared to be limping toward the finish line, but has won two straight.

Now, it’s time to see if Timme Time can extend past all the glory that is March.

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