When Sean Marks and the front office designed this Brooklyn Nets team, they knew it was going to be extremely top-heavy. With a major component of total cap space being allocated to Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving, that left precious few resources left for the rest of the squad. No one should be complaining as this is basically the ideal way to build a team, having three top 20 players signed before doing some bargain hunting.

Even though the Nets' Big 3 are all perimeter-oriented, it's actually Joe Harris and Patty Mills–two more wing-players–who are the next highest paid Nets. You can guess then how little was left to spend on the bigs. Courtesy of Basketball-Reference:

These days it's become common place to say it's a perimeter-oriented league. But still, you'd be hard pressed to point to another contender with less resources devoted to securing impact big men.

So how has their front court fared so far?

The way Brooklyn puts it, they've tried to assemble a platoon of bigs. They've admitted they really just went for the best values and not necessarily positional designations. They turned last season to the buyout market (where they found some former superstars in Blake Griffin and LaMarcus Aldridge).

Aldridge had to abruptly retire with an irregular heartbeat, but purportedly his short time last season (sixe games) inspired him to return this offseason once he was medically cleared.

Last summer the best values were also veterans presumably content to take discounts to join a ready-made contender. They brought in Paul Millsap and James Johnson. And of of course, there were key holdovers like Nic Claxton and Bruce Brown still under contract as well–although it's a stretch to call Brown (6'4”) a big, the Nets have used him that way out of necessity. But that emphasizes the main point here. They're asking for a lot of production out of precious little cap space worth of bigs.

But at 19-8 and in first place in the East, the Nets have somehow cobbled it together, with those playing well rising to the top of Steve Nash's rotation.

Blake Griffin, shooting just 15.8 percent from deep, has lost his place in the regular rotation. Aldridge on the other hand has thrived, becoming the team's third leading scorer through 27 games. LaAutomatic has been a huge lift so far in 2021-22 by averaging 14 points per game.

Paul Millsap has only logged 235 minutes in 21 games. A combination of absences for “personal reasons” and lack of impact have limited his role thus far. And unfortunately, that situation has only gotten worse with the 16 year pro testing positive for COVID-19 on Monday.

The Nets, who are all vaccinated (except for Kyrie Irving who hasn't been around), must now hope he's the only member of the team and coaching staff to test positive, while praying for a speedy recovery for the veteran big man.

Then there is James Johnson and Nic Claxton. It's these two who have really come on as of late, allowing the team to deploy some switch-heavy lineups (which give off postseason vibes) and put the clamps on opponents. Claxton missed 17 consecutive games with non-COVID illness. Since he returned, however, the Georgia product has helped the team switch more and allow less points. Johnson has been a key member of those switching lineups as well.

Claxton performed brilliantly in recent big road wins over Luka Doncic's Dallas Mavericks and Trae Young's Atlanta Hawks.

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Kevin Durant spoke recently about the platoon of bigs and how their respective skill sets have combined to help stack wins.

“Yeah when you got guys like [Aldridge, Millsap] who can play a different style than [Johnson and Claxton it's] definitely good for your team,” Durant said.

“I feel like all the best teams in the league are pretty versatile, and have their bigs and their wing players. I think we got a few guys who can do multiple things. [Johnson] handling the ball, [Claxton] rolling to the rim, then LaMarcus and Paul playing at a little slower pace through the post, knocking down jump shots. So it's good to be versatile. We just gotta keep working that rotation and see what's best for us, keep plugging away.”

For now they'll keep plugging away. Earlier in the year LaMarcus was a midrange assassin and helped them steal a couple games they were about to drop. More recently, it has been Johnson and Claxton who have been out there for a couple of the team's best defensive games of the young season.

Nearing 30 games in and mostly getting the job done the, like KD said, the front-court platoon can keep plugging away.