Nash Search For A Nets Player With An Edge Should Land On Griffin
Nets Head Coach Steve Nash looked somewhat exasperated after his club eked out a 130-123 victory over bottom-feeding Detroit on Tuesday at Barclays Center.
Brooklyn (40-36), who you’d think would be coming out in every game with a sense of urgency given their battle to avoid a single-elimination play-in seed, allowed the league’s third-least efficient offense to score at will on them for most of the night. While the Nets’ first half defensive performance was more grotesque, the narrative that they “turned it up” after intermission is belied by the Pistons 118 points per 100 possessions scoring rate thereafter, which would rank as the NBA’s worst defensive rating if maintained for a whole season.
Nash hit the nail on the head in his postgame press conference when he bemoaned how often his team gets in trouble when they don’t “play with an edge” on defense. As I noted in my last post, when the Nets do apply themselves and get after it, they’ve been getting results—in their last 10 games, they’re averaging the NBA’s fifth-most steals (8.6) and second-most blocks (6.4) per game.
The problem has been a glaring lack of consistency. Sometimes, for instance, Kyrie Irving is engaged, getting into opposing ballhandlers and executing his defensive assignments; other nights, not so much, regularly losing his man on cuts and not rotating hard on three-point shooters.
The ultimate hit-or-miss player has been reserve forward James Johnson. You look at his recent box scores and marvel at how often his presence on the court has led to game-changing runs one way or the other. In his last eight games, he’s been in double figures in plus/minus six times, only twice on the plus side, all the while averaging just 15.6 minutes per game. That seems hard to do.
Johnson’s inability to space the floor has been problematic all season, offsetting much of the good work he does at screen-setting and playmaking. Etched in many Nets fans minds was an offensive possession during Brooklyn’s critical 119-110 defeat to visiting Charlotte on Sunday, when a weary Kevin Durant maneuvered into the paint and got surrounded by buzzing Hornets. He peeked into the corner, saw it was Johnson who was wide open…and then opted for a difficult pull-up that missed.
It wouldn’t matter as much if Johnson brought it every night on the defensive end. Unfortunately, though he’s an expert martial artist, he’s been as gaffe-prone as anyone when it comes to thwarting the opponent. Among Nets regulars, he leads the team in fouls per 36 minutes while sharing the worst on-court/off-court defensive rebounding percentage split with Nic Claxton.
If Nash is looking for someone who brings more of a consistent edge to the game, he doesn’t have to look very far. Blake Griffin, who began the season as Brooklyn’s starting center, has been relegated to the Nets’ bench for much of the second half.
Griffin’s demotion was appropriately performance-based, but if there’s one thing in his game that couldn’t be quibbled over, it was his hard-edged approach.
Griffin may have lost a ton of the athleticism that made him a six-time NBA All-Star, but he’s done his best to adapt his game to the more ground-based normal. This is a guy who isn’t afraid to bang. He’s still atop the league in charges drawn per game and is guaranteed to hit the floor multiple times during every one of his runs.
The issue with Griffin earlier in the season was more on the offensive side of the floor. He simply couldn’t put the ball in the basket at an acceptable rate, from any level. He opened the season by clanking 61 of his first 76 three-point attempts, a ghastly 19.7% clip, before Nash pulled the plug.
Lately, though, Griffin has found his stroke, converting on 50% (9-for-18) from three-point ranges over his last nine games. Unfortunately, it’s come in sporadic minutes, so it’s difficult to know whether it will translate into more regular duty.
Still, it’s worth a try, though it would require Nash to adjust his orthodoxy and undo the Griffin pigeonhole as a five. If Griffin is keeping opposing defenses honest by knocking down shots from deep, he can play alongside Claxton on Brooklyn’s overwhelmed one-star (Durant or Irving) bench units. The only downside is Griffin’s comparative immobility, but it’s not like Johnson was a stopper either. In addition, Griffin’s savviness as a help defender and battle-level under the boards would allow Claxton to switch more freely than when he has had to worry that Johnson is the last line of defense.
Nash has to do something besides wait for Ben Simmons to emerge from his back issues. The featured return in the blockbuster trade that sent James Harden to Philadelphia at the February 10 deadline still hasn’t even been able to do anything on the court after receiving an epidural to soothe the pain from a herniated disc. This idea that the 6-foot 10, two-time NBA All-Defense player can suddenly be inserted into high-stakes action when he feels a little better seems short-sighted at this point.
You can tell that Nash is still experimenting with the rotation by all the minutes he’s been allocating to Kessler Edwards, a two-way player who is a long shot to have his contract converted so he can be activated to Brooklyn’s postseason roster. So if Nash is really concerned about his club’s lack of edge, why not see what Griffin has left in his tank in these remaining six games?