Confident Young Nets Following Rookie Head Coach’s Lead
A basketball coach’s job is to diagnose his roster and figure out what each player can and can’t do well. Then he has to design schemes that put those players in roles where they have the best chance to succeed.
But that’s not all. Like Ted Lasso, a good coach makes his players BELIEVE they can succeed. They instill confidence through a support system that allows the players some room to make mistakes while maintaining a level of accountability standards. If this process is done well on enough players, the team becomes greater than the sum of their parts.
That’s the plan rookie Head Coach Jordi Fernandez has laid out for his young Nets, and the early results have been somewhat eye-opening.
Of course, early season NBA outcomes can be as fluky as Team USA’s run to the 1980 Olympic hockey gold medal, but through six games, Fernandez and the Nets are vibing despite all the projections that they’d be tanking to the bottom of the league’s standings this season.
Brooklyn held on for a hard-fought 120-112 victory over visiting Chicago on Friday night to even its record at 3-3. Though the Nets looked fatigued in the second half on their third game in four nights, they received enough contributions from the 10 players who saw action, all of whom tallied at least 7 points, to be in position for Cam Thomas to close out the win down the stretch with 10 points in the final four minutes.
Pending the outcome of Friday night’s Denver contest, Thomas not only will lead the NBA in fourth quarter scoring, but also in points coming in clutch situations, defined by NBA.com as the last five minutes of games that were within a five-point margin.
That wasn’t always the case with Thomas, his NBA Summer League heroics notwithstanding. He posted an awful shooting split of 27.7/13/92 in clutch situations last season. That the Nets haven’t had a good record on the nights he went off further diminished his reputation.
For some reason, though, Thomas’ youth is often disregarded by NBA analysts when discussing his flaws. He just turned 23 last month and may be maturing before our eyes in his fourth NBA season.
Now, I’m not going to credit Fernandez for juicing Thomas with confidence—this is a brash young man who might have come out of the womb believing he can get buckets on anyone. However, Fernandez has been the first coach to get Thomas to buy in (to date) to the less ballyhooed details of the game, like attentive defense off the ball and boxing out, while simultaneously pumping him up by calling his scoring “his superpower.”
But also understand this: It’s not just Thomas. This is a confident group, even after they shucked away an upset against the Nuggets on Tuesday, a game that could have sent them into a tailspin. Instead, they rallied on the road back-to-back to beat injury-riddled Memphis (aren’t they always?) and then lassoed the Bulls with young players having outsized impacts in both contests.
Much was made of forward Ziaire Williams’ revenge game versus the Grizzlies. Brooklyn’s unheralded offseason trade acquisition, who also just turned 23, was a veritable buzzsaw in torching his former employer with 17 points and 4 steals in 24 minutes. Friday’s unsung hero was Keon Johnson, who went nuts during a 12-point run in a five-minute span during the second quarter.
Johnson, only 22, had previously seemed to me like he had “G-League player” tattooed on his arm. Yes, he can leap to the sky, but he appears inordinately lean to match the league’s physicality and his shooting has been erratic at best (he missed his first seven three-pointers this season). I couldn’t fathom why Fernandez was giving him minutes in Memphis and thought his ejection for a second technical foul during the third quarter was addition by subtraction.
Now I know why. Fernandez has been building Johnson up so he can be trusted in a rotation role should injuries (or trades) deplete the roster later int he season. The HC keeps on him to guard full court and to attack the paint before settling for jump shots. Against Chicago, Johnson made a couple of nice passes off penetration, one of which went to a cutting Williams for a layup.
Other young players have had their moments as well this season. After the opener, Jalen Wilson, 23, was challenged by Fernandez to improve his defense and has sported the team’s second-best defensive rating (15 minutes per game minimum), per NBA.com, over the last four games while averaging 8 points per game. Noah Clowney, 20, may be the victim in a numbers game from not shooting it well, but I’ve seen great strides in his defense, particularly his knowledge of when to go vertical instead of chasing a block.
For the many fans in the pro-tank movement, winning even a single game brings out their discontent. I get it, because this team will likely regress and these wins could end up meaning nothing but tilting the odds in the ping pong ball lottery for the 2025 NBA Draft.
But I assure you, this bodes well for the franchise’s future. Fernandez has (so far) found a way to make everyone fit into the frame. And they’re all smiling. You look at their rotation and aside from Thomas and on occasion Dennis Schroder, who scares an opponent? Yet I would retort with, “Oh yeah? Well, who has played poorly over the first six games to the point where he should be demoted? No one!”
Confidence is a tricky thing that can come and go. Currently, the Nets have it, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it followed Fernandez’s arrival.
Now, if Fernandez can get Ben Simmons to feel confident about shooting free throws, then that would be a “case closed” moment.