Nets Using Road Trip To Figure Out How To Best Unleash The Claxton
Nets Head Coach Steve Nash has been racking his brain lately to come up with ways to unleash the full value of his young center Nic Claxton, Brooklyn’s Wild Card.
Injuries and illness have plagued Claxton’s first three seasons in Brooklyn, but now that he’s healthy and has some experience under his belt, Nash would like to see more consistent outings. At least Claxton’s conditioning hasn’t been an issue on this four-game road trip that concludes in Detroit on Sunday, as he was twice called on for extended runs from the late third quarter all the way to the games’ conclusions.
As he was in Dallas on Tuesday, Claxton played a huge part in a tremendous fourth quarter shutdown effort in Brooklyn’s 113-105 victory in Atlanta on Friday. The Nets, who held Dallas star Luka Doncic in check as they blitzed the Mavericks, 27-13, to overcome an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter, similarly throttled the Hawks’ pick-and-rolls by having Claxton switch on ball screens set for Atlanta star guard Trae Young. The high-powered Hawks could only muster 14 points in the fourth quarter as the Nets pulled away.
Young beat Claxton to the basket on a couple of drives, but he shot 2-for-7 in the final frame and, equally important to Brooklyn’s cause, Claxton’s ability to play Young one-on-one allowed the other Nets defenders to stay home on Atlanta’s shooters and lob threats—Young did not register a single assist after compiling 10 through the first three quarters.
Claxton’s eight games this season, not just these last few, hardly prove a trend, but the stats show an absurd variance that can’t go unexamined: In the four games Claxton has started, his net rating is a horrid minus-30.7; in the four games he has come off the bench, his net rating has completely turned around to a plus-33.9, with a defensive rating of 77.5 points allowed per 100 possessions, per NBA.com. In fourth quarters, the disparity is even more striking, but the sample size is just too small that one bad frame can alter the perception. The record does show, however, that last season Claxton posted the team’s best fourth quarter defensive rating at 104.1 (10-game minimum).
Still, Nash may have unlocked the key to maximizing Claxton’s impact. He is not, as Nash tasked him with in the opening few games this season, a starter who can guard elite scorers like Milwaukee’s Khris Middleton off the bat, fighting through screens and instinctively executing his rotation assignments. The Nets also bled points when he started Wednesday’s 114-104 loss in Houston, though that was with star Kevin Durant taking a load management game off on the back-to-back.
However, Claxton has been effective coming off the bench to give opponents a different defensive look other than the drop coverage usually provided by LaMarcus Aldridge and, before he was benched, Blake Griffin. It kind of makes sense, given that fourth quarters are often overstuffed with isolation play and shooting percentages naturally decline when legs get heavy (the league’s median field goal percentage drops by 1.5% in fourth quarters, with three-point percentages slipping 0.7%). That environment is tailor-made for Claxton and the energy he brings at those junctures.
After Friday’s win, Durant talked about his team’s versatility, how it can provide an advantage, and Claxton’s role in it. Brooklyn went on a 16-8 run over a seven-minute stretch in the fourth quarter using a lineup of Claxton, KD, James Harden, James Johnson, and rookie Cam Thomas, one of the bigger configurations Nash, normally a proponent of small ball, has ever used.
All five players in that lineup can switch and there’s enough size on the floor to scram out of a bad matchup inside for Thomas. The defensive rebounding difficulties were also eliminated--Atlanta, who had 17 second-chance points through three quarters, were shut out in the fourth (special thanks to former Nets stiff Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, who blew two bunnies in a much-viewed sequence between Durant’s insane block of Young at the rim and his pull-up in transition to put Brooklyn up, 107-102, with 2:14 remaining).
Claxton’s defense makes it all work. Going into Friday’s game, he was holding opponents to 41.2% shooting as the closest defender, the league’s ninth-best rate (7 games minimum) this season, per NBA.com.
Claxton still has plenty on his development plate, specifically shooting. All kinds of shooting, like everything other than dunks. The Hawks must not have gotten the scouting report on Claxton’s abysmal free throw inefficiency (43% this season, 48.5% on his career) because they passed on several opportunities to hack-a-Nic when he had the ball in his hands down the stretch. Lucky for Nash, who kept Claxton on the floor for a crucial offensive possession in Dallas only to watch him blow a pair of free throws with 20 seconds remaining and sweat out the ensuing two potential game-tying three-point attempts. Without any improvement in that area, Claxton will have to be subject to offense/defense substitutions going forward.
All 19 of Claxton’s field goals made in 26 attempts this season have come inside the restricted area—he’s 0-for-6 from non-restricted area paint locations. At this point, it does not, as I had once hoped, look like Claxton will blossom into a poor man’s version of former Heat star Chris Bosh—Claxton has yet to even attempt a three-pointer this season after misfiring on 10-of-his-first-12.
However, the pending restricted free agent can make himself quite a good living doing what he does best—as a disruptor who can alter close games.