Deep Nets Show Resolve Amidst Injury Glut To Clip L.A.

The Nets’ deep bench continued to amaze despite all the injuries piling up before and during Brooklyn’s 100-93 victory over the star-laden Clippers on Wednesday night at Barclays Center.

With starters Cam Johnson and Nic Claxton each sidelined for a seventh consecutive game, Ben Simmons a late scratch due to a hip injury, and Cam Thomas exiting for good just 3:27 into the third quarter after stepping on L.A. forward P.J. Tucker’s foot, the Nets needed mega contributions from their reserves to build a 10-point cushion in the fourth quarter. Lonnie Walker IV, Trendon Watford, Dennis Smith Jr., and Day’Ron Sharpe totaled 15 points in the final frame; the Clippers quartet of Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Russell Westbrook, and newly-acquired James Harden produced 14 points.

Still, as it seems to be with every Nets game in the early going of the season, Brooklyn was going to need its “starters”, or whatever remnants there were, to make plays in crunch time to pull this one out after the Clippers cut the deficit to four points with three minutes remaining.

Such high-stress situations had been a bit problematic for a team that doesn’t have that one bankable individual in clutch minutes (Thomas, despite averaging 28.7 ppg going into the contest, had been 5-for-15 from the floor, including 1-of-9 on three-pointers, in the last five minutes of the five previous games this season that were within a five-point margin, per NBA.com). As poorly as the Clippers had played to that point, it would have been hard to bet against their vastly superior firepower with the game on the line.

However, a pair of Nets players who struggled mightily on the offensive end for much of the night came through. First, a fourth-chance opportunity thanks to some extraordinary hustle by Royce O’Neale that ended with a Mikal Bridges put-back dunk allowed Brooklyn to momentarily stem the threatening tide. About a minute later, Spencer Dinwiddie found himself isolated in the left corner against Clippers center Ivica Zubac, who was playing with five fouls. Dinwiddie’s decision to pull a step-back 3 fairly early in the shot clock when he had been 1-for-his-first-6 from deep may have been questionable, but all that mattered was that the stroke was pure, and the Nets had a 97-90 lead with 1:17 remaining.

I found it fitting that O’Neale provided the finishing touch with a late three-ball, for he and Dorain Finney-Smith have embodied Brooklyn’s resolve in the face of early adversity. Due to all the injuries, Nets Head Coach Jacque Vaughn has been forced to play overly small, putting a ton of burden on these two undersized wings playing up. O’Neale and Finney-Smith combined to grab 19 rebounds and each registered three blocked shots after it appeared in the first quarter that L.A. was going to have a party in the paint.

By the final horn, it was Brooklyn who was dancing off the court with the win.

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What a crazy start to this Nets season. Between the fluidity of the lineups and rotations, the difficult early-season schedule, and the competitiveness of almost every game, you could argue that Brooklyn deserves to be anywhere from 1-7 to 7-1. A 4-4 mark heading into Friday’s In-season Tournament game in Boston? I say take it and run.

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Every Nets fan winced in anguish when watching Thomas fall to the Barclays Center floor on Wednesday night and is praying for the least-damaging diagnosis from Thursday’s MRI on his foot. (Expletive), he was just getting started in this next step of his development. It’s not just that his production in the seven games had been stellar; you also had this feeling there was more he was going to untap. Just what this tortured fan base needs--another gut punch.

The Nets themselves, though, have been non-plussed throughout this spate of injuries. I’m sure Vaughn and the whole team not only feel confident with Walker taking the reins as the next man up, I wouldn’t put it past them if Armoni Brooks, a two-way player, suddenly went off should he be called upon on Friday to fill Walker’s role as a scoring guard off the bench. After all, Brooks nailed 5-of-6 three-pointers and scored 17 points in 16 minutes to help lift the Nets to a victory in Miami on November 1, his only non-garbage-time run.

It's like the Nets are mocking this war of attrition.

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Some Silly Small Sample Size Theater after eight games:

Watford has now played 38 minutes over three games for the Nets since he was signed as a free agent this summer after getting waived by Portland. It’s no secret I’m a fan (See: Watford Has Potential To Be Next Nets’ Development Model Picked Up Off The Street (substack.com)).

In those runs, NBA.com has the Nets scoring 140.5 points per 100 possessions with Watford on the floor while yielding just 100 for a net rating of 40.5. That net rating would put Watford in first place among all NBA players who have averaged at least 12.5 minutes per game in at least three games… by 13.6 points!

Obviously, that’s not going to be sustainable, nor will Watford end up with a shooting split of 58.3/50/100, but I’m not sure he can’t keep replicating what he’s been giving Brooklyn in terms of raw production: 20 points, 11 rebounds, 8 assists, and 4 steals in just those 38 minutes. Five turnovers are too high, but the poster dunk on Tucker midway through the fourth quarter that was negated by a phantom charge call (watch the replay—I refuse to believe Tucker wasn’t moving when Watford gathered—doing it with one hand instead of two likely confused the refs when reviewing the challenge) was worth the cost of the lost possession in my stat book.

I’m curious, though, why Vaughn made Watford, who turns 23 today, a DNP-CD in five of the previous seven games. To me, Watford has the size and skillset that would be helpful even if it’s just in short spurts. And every time he has received an opportunity, hasn’t he played well enough to leave you wanting for more?    

Photo by: Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports