Memo To Fading Nets: More Four For Clowney Please
Noah Clowney’s Long Island apprenticeship should be over. For the final 10 games of this miserable Nets season, he belongs in Brooklyn full time, getting somewhere between 12-to-20 minutes per game, depending on the circumstances.
Even if it means he’s a 4.
Nets Head Coach Kevin Ollie finally caved and allowed Clowney, Brooklyn’s No. 21 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft and the fifth-youngest player in the league at 19, according to NetsDaily, to get some run alongside centers Nic Claxton or Day’Ron Sharpe during Monday night’s 96-88 victory at injury-ravaged Toronto.
Hallelujah.
For most of the season, the organization was actually wise to allow Clowney to get comfortable with being a professional in the G League, where he played 19 games. Until last Thursday’s contest at Milwaukee, he had only logged 86 total NBA minutes over 10 games, all but three during garbage time. But he also benefitted by being able to practice with both clubs throughout the season.
The plan worked. The improvement from when fans first got a glimpse of Clowney during the Las Vegas Summer League has been intriguing. I’ll admit, I wasn’t a fan of the pick when it was made and I let the pickup style summer event prematurely confirm my worst suspicions. But now he no longer looks lost out there and is using his ample athleticism to his advantage when opportunities arise. Make no mistake, the development process is still in its infancy—Clowney has plenty of work to do on his body and fundamental skills going forward.
However, with Brooklyn’s (27-45) fantasy of catching up to Atlanta for the 10th and final Eastern Conference play-in seed fading into oblivion (thanks Boston for blowing a 30-point lead to the Hawks on Monday night), they are fee to set up Clowney’s next stage on NBA courts. If I see one more tweet from the Nets social media account that “The Brooklyn Nets have assigned Noah Clowney to their G-League affiliate, the Long Island Nets”, I will scream.
Nor do I want to hear the excuse from Ollie that Clowney’s minutes conflict with the team’s veteran centers Claxton and Sharpe. I know that’s how it has always been done in the Nets World created by General Manager Sean Marks. During the 2022 NBA Playoffs, the Nets roster contained five centers—Claxton, Sharpe, Andre Drummond, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Blake Griffin. Not for a minute did any two see action together during the ignominious four-game sweep against a Boston club that often mixed in two of Al Horford, Daniel Theis and Robert Williams III,
But the modern NBA reality is that playing two bigs together can be complementary, not clashing. Or has the organization not noticed that four of the league’s top six teams (Boston, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Minnesota) routinely roll out Twin Towers lineups?
Hopefully, Ollie’s usage of Clowney at the 4 in Toronto was just a start, not a mere one-game experiment against a depleted lineup. From the tiny sample size versus an opponent that should have been overmatched, the results were positive, especially during the shared Claxton/Clowney minutes.
Of course, a prerequisite for continuing with the two-big lineups is that at least one of them must be able to provide some semblance of floor spacing--and that’s Clowney’s opening. While he is by no means a knock-down jump shooter at the moment, his improved form suggests he can grow into a serviceable one. Though his season efficiency from deep at Long Island was a mere 34%, he did hit on 8-of-his-last-16 three-point attempts over his last four games. Playing rotation minutes in two of Brooklyn’s last three games, he’s gone 2-for-7 on 3s, though I would count several of the misses as spot-on looks that just didn’t fall. Both makes came from his four attempts from the corners, per NBA.com.
That threat from long range opens up a range of possibilities for Clowney in the halfcourt offense. He took advantage of one Toronto closeout by driving into the paint from above the break for a thunderous dunk.
The added size from using Clowney as a second big on the floor can be even more impactful on the defensive end. Ollie is still sticking with a switch-everything scheme as his primary foundation, which means the Nets have been getting pummeled on the defensive glass while Claxton is out on the perimeter chasing ballhandlers off switches. Brooklyn’s scram-switching, whereby the Nets replace a mismatched smaller defender with a bigger one as the screener rolls into the paint, has been at best inconsistent (or lazy, if you should so choose). It makes a difference when the scram switcher is the 6-foot 9 Clowney as opposed to smaller Nets like Dorian Finney-Smith or Mikal Bridges.
Ollie mentioned in Monday’s postgame press conference that Clowney also has the potential to be a 1-through-5 switcher, similar to Claxton. That remains to be seen—while Clowney was able to hang with Toronto’s minor league level ballhandlers, Milwaukee point guard Damian Lillard got him on 4-of-6 field goal attempts when he was the closest defender during Brooklyn’s 115-108 loss last Thursday, according to NBA.com. For now, Clowney’s immediate potential seems to be more as a help side shot blocker.
That’s enough for fans to want to see more as the Nets play out the otherwise meaningless string.