Depleted Nets Sure Could Use The Old Claxton

Indy Star

With all the adversity bombarding the Nets in the last few weeks, this season feels like it’s dragging on for an eternity.

For example, it was only last Thursday when center Nic Claxton saved Brooklyn’s bacon in Milwaukee. The Nets, on the verge of choking on a 21-point lead over the last seven minutes, needed a stop in the closing seconds to preserve a 111-110 advantage.

The Bucks isolated their star Giannis Antetokounmpo on Claxton. The Greek Freak drove to the right of the lane while Claxton rode with each of his ginormous strides without fouling. Antetokounmpo barely touched the paint when he threw up his righty layup. It rimmed out, the Nets grabbed the rebound, and made the free throws to hold on for a 113-110 victory.

It was Claxton’s best overall game of the season. Not known for his stamina, he matched Antetokounmpo second-for-second until he needed a break with about 2:30 remaining in the third quarter on his way to a season-high 33:16. Claxton finished with 16 points, 11 rebounds, and a block. While Antetokounmpo got his share (27 points) too, the Nets, buoyed by Claxton’s defensive commitment. were able to contain the other guys, holding them to 29.7% from three-point lands.

Again, that seems like eons ago, because the two games since have seen Claxton revert to the low-energy enigma that seems to have raised the ire of Nets Head Coach Jordi Fernandez.

After Indiana was gifted a pair of second-chance buckets in the first 3:20 of Monday night’s ho-hum 113-99 victory at Barclays Center, Fernandez pulled Claxton in favor of backup center Day’Ron Sharpe.

Fernandez will get a pass on his postgame explanations—he actually praised Claxton’s effort on Monday night—because he is in an untenable situation. For the last two games, the Nets have had more players from their 15-man roster in street clothes (8) with various ailments than those in uniform (7), leaving Fernandez with mostly G League options. So on a night when the Nets didn’t enable their opponent to empty its bench until the last minute, that’s a win in his book.

However, Fernandez has previously expressed unhappiness with Claxton, explicitly and implicitly. After the Nets blew a 21-point lead to lose by 1 at Orlando on December 29, Fernandez said, “I put that on all the guys on our team that our over 23 years old. Those are our grownups.” By process of elimination, we can deduce he was only referring to Claxton and Ben Simmons. And since Claxton rested the final 4:48 of Monday’s first quarter so he could start Q2, I’d bet Fernandez didn’t yank him so soon without cause, no matter the tone of his postgame remarks.

The Nets were expecting so much more from Claxton this season, even through all the distractions from the teardown to tank. He’s in the first season of a 4-year, $100 million contract extension he signed in July and you have to wonder if he’ll ever live up to it.

The Ringer’s Michael Pina just posted a column on the NBA’s Least Improved Players of the season to date. Perhaps because Brooklyn is so far under the radar of the league’s mainstream pundits, he didn’t include Claxton.

But he could have. Claxton is producing per-36 minute numbers at or near career lows in a majority of stats, including categories (field goal percentage and blocked shots) where he was among the League leaders just two seasons ago. He has not developed a perimeter game, shooting 5-for-25 (20%) from outside the paint, including 1-for-11 (9%) on 3s. Even his free throw percentage has plateaued, converting 54.3% from the line this season.

I used the per-36 minute stats because Claxton did incur a couple of injuries earlier in the season that forced him to miss six games and be put on a minutes restriction budget in many others. Still, the Bucks game made him look as close to full strength as we’ve seen, yet the consistency is lacking.

Since December 26 when his minutes got bumped up to over 30, he’s been averaging a little under 11 points, 8 rebounds, and 0.6 blocks while shooting 45.5% from the floor over those seven games. And this includes two of his three highest scoring efforts of the season!

I’ll concede the excuse that his offensive production was bound to be affected by the loss of virtually every one of Brooklyn’s playmakers—some of these wayward lobs are too reminiscent of the Spencer Dinwiddie days. But the defense? The Nets are surrendering 118.2 points per 100 possessions in Claxton’s minutes, a rate which would only beat that of the lowly Raptors in the team listing during this span. Where’s the rim protection?

Unlike his HC predecessors, Fernandez is not bound by a switch-everything foundation on opponents’ pick-and-rolls. Yet too often Claxton is overeager to showcase his ability to hang with the league’s elite ballhandlers, even though it can mean his smaller teammate is caught in a fruitless battle with a star big man like Antetokounmpo or Joel Embiid.

Equally important, the Nets are looking to Claxton for leadership. Hard to believe, but at 25 he was Brooklyn’s oldest player from the roster to take the court for the last two games (two-way Tyrese Martin is about a month older). Since getting kicked out for a third time in the first 27 games of the season on December 19, Claxton has done a better job of keeping his emotions in check, though there have been a few instances where the stack was half-blown.

It's just that when he’s been on the floor, he’s been underwhelming, and that’s a development the Nets organization will have to take under advisement.