Freefalling Nets Neither Lucky Nor Good

Dean Mouhtaropoulos / Getty Images

Forget Paris.

That’s my takeaway from the Nets 111-102 defeat to Cleveland in Thursday’s NBA Global Games affair. Turn the City of Light off. And it might not be all that long before I’ll say the same thing about this Nets season.

Losers of 12 of their last 15 games, the Nets (16-22) are in abject freefall. They’re not even fun to watch anymore. Memphis, the lowest point producer in the league, averages 108.1 points per game, a figure Brooklyn has topped just twice in its last seven games.

Opponents with any level of scouting know that with Spencer Dinwiddie, who attempted to play through an illness on Thursday, in a horrid shooting slump (a 37/27/74 split in his last 18 games), the key to stifling Brooklyn’s offense is to cut off his driving lanes, which initiates so much of the team’s ball movement. Instead, you see endless high screens and dribble handoffs that go nowhere, especially against physical clubs like Cleveland who can blow them up and then switch.

Mikal Bridges’ game has been collateral damage, for he has often struggled when tasked with primary facilitator duties. Sunday’s dreadful home loss in overtime was his first in 15 games where he hit a 50/40 shooting split from the field and three-point ranges, a feat he accomplished eight times in 27 games following last February’s trade with Phoenix. He then followed it up by going 6-for-18, including 2-for-6 from deep, with 1 assist to 4 turnovers on Thursday, though he did get to the free throw line 13 times. The Nets cannot win with Bridges this inefficient.  

A late Brooklyn run did get a 26-point deficit down to seven, but then they had no answer for Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell (45 points), who got to wherever he wanted on the court. Must be nice.

It could get worse from here. The Nets return home to face Miami on Monday before embarking on a three-game West Coast trip to face Portland and both L.A. teams. Home games versus the Knicks and Timberwolves follow. In how many of these games will they be favored?    

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There’s a narrative that the Nets are trying to spin about how this is just an “unlucky stretch.” You know, the make-or-miss league, where the other guys are making them and they’re misfiring. Believing things will soon even out.

My friend NetsDaily recently referenced a quote attributed to Branch Rickey in a reply to an inane social media post last week. For those young readers who haven’t heard of him, Rickey was credited with, among other things, signing Jackie Robinson when the Dodgers played baseball in Brooklyn and once wrote, “Luck is the residue of design.”

The quote struck a familiar chord with me in a different context when ruminating over the sorry state of the Nets’ defense during their slump. For there have been an irritating number of postgame musings where players and Head Coach Jacque Vaughn have bemoaned their opponent’s flukish scorching shooting.

The numbers, apparently, back them up. According to data scientist Daniel Bratulic, the Nets allowed opponents to shoot 45.9% on “wide-open” three-point field goal attempts during December, 7.1% better than those opponents had made on those shots during the season. Only the Lakers were more “unlucky.”

From NBA.com’s tracking, such ill fortune has continued into 2024, with the Nets’ opponents shooting 49.5% on wide open 3s over the four games heading into Thursday’s contest, the fourth-worst rate in the league. It’s why Brooklyn is last in the league in three-point defense in their last 16 games since December 11, allowing an unconscionable 43.5% percentage. In that period, they held opponents to under 39% three-point shooting in the same number of games (four) that they allowed over a 50% conversion rate.

The relative lack of variance made me wonder: Was this bad luck, or poor design?  

Though I don’t have supportive data, it occurred to me that the term “wide open” only reflects the distance of the nearest defender to the shooter, typically at least six feet, not time AND space. Give any NBA player the opportunity to set his feet, rotate the ball to his liking, and shoot without a contest and he’ll knock those down way more frequently than if he were only given space but not the time. Heck, New Yorkers on social media are inundated every offseason with social media videos of Nic Claxton and Mitchell Robinson, two non-shooting centers, draining 3s in workouts.

From my eye test, the Nets, with their conversion to a drop defense, allow these type of practice shots way more often than they get within their own offense. Defenders pinch in off their men on the perimeter to help protect the paint, many times just one pass away from a relocated three-point shooter. The ball is always faster than the man, so the rotations have been typically too late to even bother with a contest.

Other times, three-point shots are just “given”, as if it were a pickup game among friends in the park. Straight-on 3s are almost as easy as those taken from the corners, yet Brooklyn’s analytics team must be producing reports that say it’s ok to be accommodative on some of them. Better to protect the paint at all costs, they must read. The Nets are at least the league’s third-most stingiest in that category.

After the Portland debacle, Bridges let out a little frustration, saying, “Our defense is predicated on protecting the paint, so we give up threes. It's tough when you play teams with guys that can shoot. It hurts."

No kidding.

The Nets went back to a more switch-heavy scheme on Thursday, and the result was what you’d expect—better three-point defense but, with Claxton switching out onto the perimeter, difficulties at the point of attack and on the defensive glass. The Cavs shot 43 foul shots and rebounded 31.5% of their misses, turning those into 18 second chance points, per NBA.com.

I really don’t see why the Nets can’t trust Claxton to be the sole paint protector in a drop defense against 4-out offenses while the others are given the simple task of sticking with their perimeter assignments. Play pick-and-rolls 2-on-2, even if a defender gets screened. Most of these defenders know how to navigate picks so they can at least come around to the back side--I once saw an aging Garrett Temple do it to Atlanta’s Trae Young without fouling out, so it shouldn’t be a big deal for guys with strong defensive reputations like Bridges, Dorian Finney-Smith, Dennis Smith Jr., et al..

So, maybe the Nets haven’t gotten many breaks during this rough patch. Still, when it comes to the old adage that it’s better to be lucky than good, they haven’t been either.