Needing To Overextend KD To Squeak Past Lowly Teams Doesn’t Bode Well For Nets’ Future Success

Corey Sipkin for the NY POST Photo

Watching the Nets struggle to separate from a bad, shorthanded Orlando squad in their 109-102 victory on Monday night at Barclays Center brought flashbacks to last season. And not the good kind.

With the Nets in a dogfight just to qualify for the 2022 play-in tournament, they needed to ride superstar forward Kevin Durant hard. Over the last 10 games, half of them versus non-playoff teams tanking for better lottery odds, KD averaged 40 minutes per game.

It caught up to him after the Nets defeated Cleveland in the play-in round to advance to the Eastern Conference quarterfinals against the Celtics, who turned the defensive screws on Durant and cohort Kyrie Irving. KD was held to 38.6% shooting (including 33.3% from three-point ranges) in an embarrassing four-game sweep.

Here we go again.

I shudder to imagine what Monday’s result would have been had KD, who at 34 was forced to log 39 minutes on a back-to-back and third game in four nights, merely registered his normal great game instead of the awesome 45-point, 7 rebound, and 5 assist performance he put forth on 19-of-24 shooting from the floor. The Nets might have blown another one to a lesser-talented team on paper like they did a week ago at injury-depleted Philadelphia.

Despite Durant’s heroics and having just nine players active, several of whom belonged in the G League, the Magic stayed within single digits for most of the fourth quarter and cut the deficit to four points with 1:01 remaining on a Bol Bol three-pointer. The Nets finally put the game away courtesy of a Nic Claxton free throw and an uncontested dunk.

While tis better to win these games than not, it doesn’t bode well in the Nets’ bigger picture. As last season proved, just because they can defeat inferior teams despite playing down to their levels doesn’t mean they will automatically rise up to compete with the league’s elite. Against the ten teams that have reached 12 wins in the season’s first quarter, Brooklyn (11-11) is just 2-3, beating a Clippers squad playing without superstar Kawhi Leonard and a facsimile of Memphis that was missing its top three scorers in Ja Morant, Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr. I’m curious to see what happens when the Celtics come to Brooklyn on Sunday.

The bad habits presented in games like Monday night’s, starting with a general disrespect, subconsciously or otherwise, for those opponents, can become ingrained. The Nets were bitten all last season by careless turnovers and lapses in defensive details like missed assignments and boxouts, and it was no different in the Celtics series—Brooklyn allowed the most points off turnovers per game and third-most second-chance points among the 16 playoff teams.

The same bugaboos are rearing their ugly heads too often this season as well, even after the head coaching change from Steve Nash to Jacque Vaughn on November 1. The defense is surrendering the third-worst three-point percentage allowed, committing the sixth-most fouls, and owns the lowest defensive rebounding percentage in the league.

Offensively, the Nets’ supporting cast hasn’t given KD and Kyrie enough consistent support. Their third-leading scorer is Claxton, and he is shooting 6-for-24 (25%) outside the restricted area, per NBA.com.

Seth Curry, who has been slowly ramping into game shape after offseason ankle surgery, played both ends of the back-to-back for the first time all season. Unfortunately, he followed up a scorching 29-point outburst against Portland on Sunday by going 1-for-4 from the floor in 25 minutes versus the Magic. I wrote about Joe Harris last week, and Monday’s effort saw some small steps in the right direction, particularly with his cuts to the basket, but he’s still in the midst of a dreadful 5-for-30 slump from deep over the last five games. Some of Monday’s misses on wide-open looks off beauteous ball movement could have been demoralizing.

As for Ben Simmons, the expected third member of a Big 3, just as he was beginning to round into the form that made him a three-time NBA All Star with Philadelphia, he hit a roadblock. Aggressive Ben reverted to timid Ben--he scored two points in his last six quarters before exiting Monday’s contest before halftime with soreness in his knee, a recurring issue. It’s always something with him.

Royce O’Neale’s playmaking has been a pleasant development, but he’s not a natural scorer—more than half his field goal attempts this season are catch-and-shoot three-pointers, per NBA.com. Patty Mills and Markieff Morris have been glued to the bench the last few games while Cam Thomas has totaled nine points over Brooklyn’s last seven games.

Who else is there to step up? Yuta Watanabe exploded on the scene out of nowhere—he’s on a nonguaranteed contract—to bring some juice to the table with his nearly automatic corner three-point shooting (76.2%), but he’s missed the last five games with a hamstring injury and has already been ruled out for Wednesday’s meeting with Washington. In any event, it’s hard to use an injured role player off the bench as an excuse when the Nets have benefitted so much this season from the absence of opposing stars.

Could Watanabe’s and T.J. Warren’s imminent return, possibly Friday against Toronto, provide a needed spark? In Warren’s case, that would be wonderful, but based on what we’ve seen from Simmons, Curry, and Harris, it would be extraordinarily optimistic to expect him to be the bucket getter he was in the 2020 bubble following multiple foot surgeries that cost him all but four games over the last two-plus seasons.

To get back to the original point, the Nets are wasting KD’s remaining prime seasons. Sure, so long as he stays healthy, he can carry this team to a low playoff seed, possibly above the top-six play-in cutoff. But Durant’s brilliance is not nearly enough to secure the ultimate goal as originally envisioned when he and Irving teamed up in the 2019 offseason, not with how this roster is currently constructed.

It was barely enough to squeak past the lousy Magic.