Could Season-Ending Malaise Put New Nets Culture In Peril?

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As Nets fans endure one of the more miserable seasons in the franchise’s not-so-glorious history, the one thing they could hang their hats on during the ordeal was that Brooklyn was establishing a competitive identity under its rookie Head Coach Jordi Fernandez. Despite the glaring talent discrepancies on most nights, the Nets’ spirit and connectivity often helped them hang around in games, even winning some of them to the dismay of the pro-tank segment.

Heading into Monday’s tilt with visiting Dallas, the Nets (23-50) had played 10 consecutive games that were decided by single digits. That they went 2-8 in that stretch satisfied everyone but those who pined all year for 0-82. Still, whether you were a fervent pro-tanker or agnostic on the subject in recognition of the minimal differences in Draft Lottery odds, you could appreciate how the new “culture”, for lack of a better word, could be a useful building block for the future.

So what a shame it would be if the Nets wasted those efforts as they play out the string. With Brooklyn stumbling to the finish line, I can see cracks in the culture. They may not expand into a full-scale gusher over the final nine games, but it bears watching.

The Nets, who have not held a lead since going up, 12-11, in the first quarter of Saturday’s loss at Indiana, a span of approximately 140 minutes, played like they’re going through the motions while getting pummeled by the Mavericks and then the Raptors on Wednesday. Understand that these opponents aren’t exactly juggernauts; Dallas may have benefitted from All-Star center Anthony Davis’ return to action on Monday, but they had been in danger of being unable to field the minimum of eight players. And Toronto had been one of the more aggressive tankers in the NBA’s bottom tier, egregiously benching their best players in fourth quarters of close games. After Dallas manhandled Brooklyn, 120-101, the Raptors breezed to a 116-86 rout at a catatonic Barclays Center anyway.

Next up is the Clippers, who only defeated the Nets by 59 points in their first meeting in Los Angeles on January 15. Unless the James Harden crew overextends themselves in the New York City party scene in the interim, young Nets fans should be instructed to look away on Friday night.

Maybe after playing with peak intensity for much of the season, the Nets might be running on fumes. Whereas Fernandez once had his club committed to applying ball pressure. the Nets guarded like they were a bunch of lawn gnomes in both of the week’s contests. Who needs pick-and-roll when the ballhandler can just blow by his defender with ease? Nets center Nic Claxton racked up five blocks on Wednesday, but that was mainly the upshot of him needing to come over so often to help out his toasted teammate.

What Claxton’s stat doesn’t show is the number of times the Nets got burned by not helping the helper. Opposing teams can take advantage of disconnected defenses through making the extra pass for a layup or via offensive rebounds. Toronto and Dallas each posted 17 second chance points, or one under Houston’s league-leading average.

The Nets have also been getting beat badly in transition, surrendering nearly 20 fast break points a game over their last six games, the third-most in the league in that period, per NBA.com. That probably doesn’t even count the instances where the opposition scored from pushing the pace after Nets made baskets. The attention to these details is a huge part of Fernandez’s 1% improvement mantra, only the Nets appear to be going in the wrong direction.

Offensively, the Nets are obviously hamstrung (no pun intended) by injuries to their few creative players, including Cam Thomas’ shutdown. Cam Johnson and D’Angelo Russell seem to be alternating days off to deal with their respective ailments. DLo in particular has been a shell of the player he once was; besides his sore ankle, his shooting split of 29.7/22.4/68.4 over his last six games can be partially explained by his tendency to glide off his spot on too many of his perimeter hoists. Some contract run he’s having, huh?

The flip side is that the Nets need Russell on the floor or else they become turnover magnets. Per NBA.com, Brooklyn’s turnover percentage is 11.7% with Russell on the court in their last ten games, and 14.9% without, the largest difference among Nets who played at least 75 minutes during that span.

After the Raptors loss, Fernandez pointed to the opponents’ ball pressure as the underlying cause for Brooklyn’s 20 turnovers (which led to 30 Toronto points). There’s some truth to that, except only five of them were of the live ball variety. That means there was an overabundance of balls carelessly thrown into the stands or loose dribbles fumbled off legs and out of bounds. A couple of passes were tossed at players who weren’t looking in that direction. These are not just signs of reckless behavior; it also goes back to connectivity.

The Nets are still popping threes like Elvis Presley with his pills, even when it did neither of them any good. Brooklyn is fourth in the league in three-point attempts this month and last in percentage. Some of the looks have come off quality ball/player movement, which is how they racked up at least 30 assists five times in their last nine games, including against Dallas. However, they can also shoot themselves out of games with one-pass or no-pass possessions that end with quick jacks.

Through this slide into oblivion, Fernandez has remained calm, which is understandable. There’s only so much haranguing a coach can get through to NBA players in a marathon season. It’s not like they aren’t trying—as I wrote in my last Nets post, only four of them have fully guaranteed contracts for next season, so the rest are literally playing for their livelihoods. I don’t even have major issues with Fernandez’s tactics, including all the double-teams.

Though I can’t pinpoint why, this end-of-season malaise was entirely foreseeable, a normal and unfortunate consequence of pursuing a race to the bottom. In addition to the cumulative physical agonies, constant losing tends to be mentally draining. When you see the finish line in such a scenario, a human instinct is to cut corners to get there faster.

And that means that all this culture work that had been painstakingly instilled over the course of this horrible season could end up needing another reset.