Inside The Nets’ Recent Fourth Quarter Wrinkle

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Fourth quarters of NBA contests often transform in the sense that the pace tends to slow while defenses bear down, resulting in more isolation possessions targeting weaker defenders. It’s not uncommon for the games to grind to a halt as opposed to the more free-flowing game that preceded it.

However, I don’t know if I’ve seen a team, other than the Warriors’ short-lived “Death lineup” during the last decade, alter its style solely for fourth quarters as drastically as Brooklyn has this month. Besides being a laughable comparison to the greatness of that historic Golden State squad, the Nets went the other direction.

They’ve gone big. Very big. The unexpected catalyst: Rookie Danny Wolf.

If I were to tell you that Wolf, 21, leads Brooklyn in December fourth quarter minutes (65), you’d probably think the Nets were constantly scuffling through garbage time from routinely getting blown out. Except Brooklyn has gone 5-3 this month and half of those games were within a five-point margin in the last five minutes.

Wolf, the last of Brooklyn’s unprecedented five first-round pick haul at No. 27 overall in June’s NBA Draft, played seven games in November at G League Long Island. I don’t think he even entered Head Coach Jordi Fernandez’s consciousness until Brooklyn’s shorthanded squad dropped a one-sided affair at Milwaukee on November 29. Wolf scored 22 points that night, and he’s become a staple off Fernandez’s bench since.

Obviously, the vagaries of the NBA schedule play a large role in outcomes—Sunday’s 96-81 victory over visiting Toronto was Brooklyn’s only one this month over a .500-plus team. The Raptors had played the night before in Boston and then encountered plane difficulties that messed up their routines. Typically a team that gives the Nets fits with their length and rugby-like (i.e. incessant fouling) defense, Toronto operated on low battery save for a five-minute stretch in the second half. Scottie Barnes, who has regularly torched the Nets, looked like he was half asleep.

Wolf only played 4:35 of Sunday’s final frame with just one assist marking his stat line, but the Nets were plus-nine in those minutes where they took a game that was hanging in the balance to a comfortable double-digit lead.

Fernandez often adds a wrinkle to these fourth quarter mixes, using the 6-foot 11 Wolf with Nic Claxton (6-11), Noah Clowney (6-10), and Michael Porter Jr. (6-10). They’ve played 22 minutes together over five games, outscoring the opposition, 49-40, according to NBA.com. Whether the fifth piece is rookie Egor Demin (6-8), Ziaire Williams (6-9), or Terance Mann (6-6), that makes for an awfully huge lineup.

Fernandez can get away with it because Wolf can be tasked with some ballhandling duties typically assigned to point guards. Aside from the December 3 game at Chicago where Wolf threw the ball away four times while playing all 12 minutes with the Nets well ahead, he has kept the turnovers down, committing just three in his other 53 fourth quarter minutes.

Wolf’s understanding of angles and passing executions make his relatively slow forays towards the basket rife with danger to opposing defenses. He can find open teammates one pass away or at the opposite corner, drop off dimes to cutters, or just simply finish at the rim with either hand. His 38.1% three-point rate this season means defenders have rued going under screens set for him.

The really surprising uptick in team performance, though, has come on the defensive end. The Nets are third in the league in fourth quarter defensive efficiency this month at 106.3 points allowed per 100 possessions, according to NBA.com. With Wolf on the floor, that rating drops to 97.6 thanks to a little better rebounding and more forced turnovers.

Individually, Wolf has allowed his man to shoot 7-for-30 (23.3%) from the floor as the nearest defender in fourth quarters since December 1, the NBA’s second-best stop rate (at least 25 field goal attempts defended). The Nets’ 1-through-5 switching out of these lineups, sometimes putting Wolf on islands, has not yet come back to haunt them. If he does get beat off the bounce, there’s plenty of rim protection behind him.

Again, what’s unusual about this is that Fernandez has yet to send out the four-big lineup prior to fourth quarters. Part of it is because he needs to allocate rest periods for his bigs in addition to giving minutes to other deserving players, especially the other active rookies.

We’ll see what happens when (if) the relatively miniature (6-foot 3) Cam Thomas returns from his hamstring injury. Per Fernandez, the Nets’ leading scorer prior to his Game 8 calamity is cleared for five-on-five practices. Necessity is the mother of invention, so Thomas’ 20 missed games gave Fernandez the freedom to experiment with different combinations, be it Clowney starting in Thomas’ place or the four-big fourth quarter lineups.

In the meantime, I can’t tell if it’s been disarming to opponents to have to play against a different style than what transpired on the court over the previous 36 minutes. The opponent quality in the small sample could mean that subsequent results will turn eventually negative for Brooklyn. On the other hand, perhaps if teams mentally overlooked the deficiently-talented Nets or had to, say, cancel team meetings because of travel snafus, then I guess it’s possible that Fernandez indeed knocked them for a loop with this sucker punch.