Depressed Over Nets Playoff Showing? No Matter, They Wouldn’t Have Matched Up Well With The Bucks Either
Against my better judgement—because I knew it would ignite my wrath—I watched most of Sunday’s Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals between Boston and Milwaukee. You know, the series where the Nets were bracketed to play had they beaten the Celtics in Round 1.
Of course, Brooklyn couldn’t even win a game in its best-of-seven series, and Sunday’s affair showed how difficult it would have been for them to move beyond Round 2 had they somehow managed to win four. The Bucks, playing without injured All-Star Khris Middleton, throttled their hosts. 101-89 to take an early 1-0 lead.
Both of Brooklyn’s biggest competitors play big, whereas the Nets throughout the regime of General Manager Sean Marks have embraced small-ball. Head Coach Steve Nash took it to the extreme this season, mostly rolling with three-guard lineups by rotating Kyrie Irving, Seth Curry, Brice Brown, Patty Mills, and Goran Dragic, with Brown the sole player in that group who reaches a listed 6-foot 4. Though the organization boasts five centers on their roster, Nash employed just Andre Drummond and Nic Claxton until he swapped out Drummond for Blake Griffin in the second half of Game 3.
Despite extolling the virtues of “position-less basketball”, Nash has pigeonholed all his bigs as 5s and nothing but 5s. He’ll reference how poorly Griffin and Claxton fared early in the season when Griffin’s three-point shot went AWOL. Or how much LaMarcus Aldridge hurts the team defensively—never mind that the Nets surrendered a ghastly 120 points per 100 possessions to the Celtics with Drummond on the floor (he also posted a team-worst 115.8 defensive rating in the 24 regular season games he played after coming over from Philadelphia in the James Harden blockbuster). Anything to avoid an uncomfortable discussion as to why he didn’t properly match up with his opponent. Such stubbornness left Brooklyn vulnerable in the paint and under its defensive backboard, with the Celtics picking up an additional 15 points per game after the Nets defense forced missed shots.
With Boston smothering Nets superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, it’s insane that Nash waited so long to return Griffin, who finished the regular season by knocking down 15-of-his-last-34 three-pointers (44.1%), to the rotation—and then played him with KD and Claxton for less than 30 seconds total all series.
The Celtics and the Bucks, on the other hand, have had no issues playing Twin Towers lineups. Though the duo got smoked in the nearly 16 minutes they played together on Sunday, the Brook Lopez/Bobby Portis pairing had a positive-7.9 net rating in Milwaukee’s first-round series versus Chicago and were plus-5.8 during a regular season where Lopez was limited to 12 games due to an injury. Similarly, Boston center Al Horford has been in plus territory when either of fellow centers Robert Williams III or Daniel Theis has ridden shotgun this postseason (the Williams/Theis combo hasn’t been so nice).
They’re all natural 5s, yet their coaches have designed ways to minimize their limitations, whether it’s Lopez’s foot speed or Williams’ floor spacing, so they can coexist on the court. You don’t have to switch every screen—you can play drop coverage, blitz, ice, or hedge-and-recover. As the only non-shooter in the Celtics’ lineup, Williams can make a fine living as a highly-effective lobs-and-blocks guy.
The Nets didn’t adjust their lineup constructions or coaching instructions. With Brown averaging nearly 35 minutes per game in the series, it guaranteed that the Nets would clog their attack with two non-shooters. Griffin and Aldridge at least have the ability to keep defenses honest, though Aldridge’s range is more from 20-feet-and-in than from beyond the three-point arc. When Claxton switched, the Nets lacked another big body other than KD to protect the rim and rebound. Meanwhile, the Celtics were able to hone in on favorable one-on-one matchups.
It’s possible that Nash was protecting Aldridge, who played a grand total of 23 minutes after returning from a hip injury in early March. That doesn’t excuse his disregard for Griffin, which left the Nets massively undersized at multiple matchups, since Durant should have been used to guard either of Boston’s star wings, Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown.
How would Nash have handled the Bucks frontcourt of Lopez, Portis, and Giannis Antetokounmpo, which has outscored opponent 113-93 in 50 postseason minutes? Put Curry on Portis like he did on Theis early in the Boston series? That played out as expected.
Obviously, we’ll never know, because small-ball and the Nets are home for the summer.
Publisher’s Note: After 192 columns in the last 266 days, I will be taking a bit of a break. The site won’t be completely dark. I’ll just be posting more sporadically until the NFL season picks up in August. Barring a major event, there won’t be anything posted for the rest of this week, as I’ll be headed to Duke for my son Jack’s graduation. Thanks for reading, everyone!