A Trade For Murray Not The Answer To The Nets’ Woes

Vaughn’s Decisions Deserving More Scrutiny From Brooklyn Brass

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Would the Nets have been able to outlast the visiting Heat on Monday night, as well as a few other opponents during a season that grows uglier with each loss, with Dejounte Murray at point guard instead of the substandard Spencer Dinwiddie/Dennis Smith Jr. combination?

Maybe, but let’s not overvalue the Hawks guard who is rumored to be on the trading block in advance of the February 8 deadline. Murray hasn’t seen a whole lot of winning over the last five seasons (before that, he missed the entire 2018-19 campaign with a torn ACL) of his career—his clubs were a cumulative 24 games under .500 with him in the lineup. Though he has been knocking down a respectable 38.6% of his three-point attempts this season, he was shooting them at an aggregate 33.6% rate over the previous four seasons, including a below league average 34.4% in 2022-23.

Murray is clearly a skilled offensive player, but he has one of those lean body types and shoots a lot from the mid-range, characteristics which the Nets already have in abundance. His defense, despite a decent wingspan, has reportedly been suspect in Atlanta, be it at the point of attack or in passing lanes to generate steals.

So, is this the guy for whom the Nets want to dip into their asset cupboard to acquire? It cost the Hawks three first-round picks, only one of which (2023) was protected, and a 2026 swap, in the June 2022 trade with San Antonio for Murray. Then Atlanta extended him with a 4-year, $120 million contract that takes effect next season with a $25.5 million salary cap hit. I highly doubt they’d take just Dinwiddie and one first-round pick back, as some have speculated. Not when there could be a bidding war for Murray’s services over the next few weeks.

Given Nets General Manager Sean Marks’ Spurs connections, I’m going to assume he has all the intel he needs on Murray. That organization doesn’t typically give up on a young player without red flags.

I also expect Marks to be budget-conscious when it comes to the Nets’ deadline activity. That means allowing the approximately $18.1 million Kevin Durant trade exception (for which Murray’s 2023-24 compensation wouldn’t fit into anyway) to expire and for them to be leery of taking on large cap hits for next season so they can avoid repeater luxury tax penalties. Once Ben Simmons’ anvil contract terminates after next season, then they can reopen for business.  

Something will probably get done, though. The Nets look like a Dead Team Walking. The crushing 96-95 defeat to Miami in overtime was their eighth in their last nine games. Outside of two victories over tanking Detroit, Brooklyn has gone 1-13 during this stretch of godawful basketball.

The Heat were on the back end of a back-to-back and did not get a single bucket outside the paint during the first half. Of course, the Nets enabled Miami to get back into the game from 16 points down during a six-minute span at the start of the third quarter. Between their team-record 43 missed three-pointers and some curious coaching decisions by Head Coach Jacque Vaughn (see below), the Heat absolutely stole this game.  

With the Nets embarking on a three-game trip out West, starting with Wednesday’s contest in Portland, the organization needs to finalize their plans for going forward. My preference would be that since it’s pretty clear that this group will not be high-achieving, they should be sellers, starting with any pending free agent who they don’t intend to re-sign. That means Dinwiddie, veteran wing Royce O’Neale, and maybe even center Nic Claxton. I wouldn’t hang up on anyone looking to poach their core personnel under contract for multiple seasons, including Mikal Bridges, but those offers would have to be extravagant to close any deals.

Some fans may be disappointed if the Nets go this route, but what’s the ceiling from adding Murray? A better shot at a play-in seed? Because getting into the Eastern Conference’s top six would require something like a 28-15 run over the season’s second half, and I don’t see how you would think that’s a likelihood even with Murray.

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As promised, I can’t let this go without mentioning Vaughn’s negative impact on the Nets’ slump. Whenever you’re evaluating a team’s offensive stats in midseason, there’s always the possibility of some regression to a mean. And then there’s what Brooklyn is going through.

After 23 games as of December13, the Nets ranked eighth in offensive rating (117.7 points scored per 100 possessions) while shooting almost 39% from three-point territories, the third-best rate in the league. Thereafter, those rankings plummeted to 26^th (110.3 points per 100 possessions) and dead last (31.9%), respectively over their last 16 games.

I don’t want to hear about injuries. If anything, the Nets have only been getting healthier over this dry spell, with backup center Day’Ron Sharpe and the (unfortunately) perpetually disabled Simmons the only rotation players on the team’s injury report for Monday’s game. Lonnie Walker IV looked to be back to his form from prior to his hamstring strain when he went for 20 points in last Thursday’s loss to Cleveland in Paris and Smith seems to have been able to put his back woes in the rearview mirror.

Otherwise, why would Vaughn run Smith for more than 21 minutes to close Monday’s game with only 12 seconds of breaks? Maybe because the beleaguered coach trusted his starters for far too long during that third quarter dry spell.

Vaughn has an irritating habit of holding his presumptive starters to different standards than he would for his bench players, even if, performance-wise, there isn’t much separation between many of them. In another example besides the Dinwiddie/Smith comparison I laid out in a prior post (Thunderous Nets Win Halted Losing Streak, Not Trade Speculation (substack.com)), if Cam Johnson isn’t hitting shots, then play the other Cam, as in Thomas.

I saw tweets that noted how the Nets went on their big first-half run as soon as Vaughn swapped out Johnson for Thomas. To be more precise, it was when he went with Thomas AND Smith. This small sample size (159 minutes) stat shocked me: In this same period when the season has gone South, the Nets have a plus-12.3 net rating with that duo sharing the court. Both players were standing on the sidelines waiting to check in during Miami’s third quarter blitz because Vaughn wouldn’t, A) call a timeout, or B) instruct someone to give a foul to force a dead ball.

Meanwhile, Vaughn took two unused timeouts home with him. One could have been burnt with the Nets down by a point with around 15 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter when Thomas was dribbling aimlessly in the frontcourt. He ended up heaving a pull-up three-point shot that had no chance. The Nets were lucky that Miami’s Bam Adebayo missed a free throw so Bridges could tie it up with 4.4 seconds left with a pair from the foul line.

And then there was the closing seconds of overtime, where Vaughn opted not to challenge a foul call on Smith (which was probably the correct call) but then held that timeout after Jimmy Butler gave Miami the one-point lead with 11.8 seconds remaining.

Instead of moving the ball to halfcourt with a play designed, the Nets had Bridges dash about 90 feet, after which he must have lost track of the time because he drove into triple coverage and threw up a wild airball from the left baseline.

That play, Vaughn said in his postgame press conference, was one where “I don’t think I’d be able to draw anything better up.” Just hand in your clipboard then.

Oh, Vaughn also supported that decision by claiming that it was “a great opportunity for (Miami) not to sub” in better defensive players. Um, Butler was at the free throw line—the Heat could have subbed in anyone they wanted for that closing possession EXCEPT for Butler, who would never come out in that situation anyway.

Vaughn’s general lack of awareness of late, while not the sole cause of Brooklyn’s collapse, has been appalling. He can’t seem to judge when his club is getting off its game, allowing opponent runs to metastasize from an avalanche of wayward threes that lead to runout after runout before he feels he’s seen enough to stop the action to make adjustments.

If the Nets go 0-3 during the trip, a possibility since they already blew a home game to the lowly Blazers, the calls for a coaching change might start to resonate with upper management.