Nets Voluminous Errant Three-Pointers Brings Flashbacks To Forgettable Era
For those who thought the new-look Nets in the wake of the Kevin Durant/Kyrie Irving trades would mirror the feel-good Brooklyn squad from 2018-19, I’m afraid the early returns suggest that you were off by a year, at least when looking through an offensive lens. Without a superstar to create quality looks for themselves and others off ensuing ball movement, both squads resorted to living and dying with three-pointers.
Needless to say, there’s been a lot of dying lately. The second half of Brooklyn’s 118-104 loss to visiting Milwaukee on Tuesday night was an excruciating watch as the Nets kept misfiring away from deep—after converting 6-of-10 three-pointers in the opening period, they went 5-for-their-next-24 until Head Coach Jacque Vaughn pulled the plug with 4:39 remaining.
The Bucks’ 15th consecutive victory dropped Brooklyn to 1-5 over their last six games. During this span, the Nets have taken the seventh most-three-pointers in the league despite a slightly below average 35.2% efficiency. The 2017-18 Nets under Kenny Atkinson weren’t all that different—that team registered the NBA’s second-most three-pointers per game while ranking 20th in three-point percentage.
Of course, this team has way more talent on its roster than that 28-54 nightmare. Still, every time forward Dorian Finney-Smith, who came to Brooklyn in the Irving deal sporting a respectable 36% career three-point rate in his seven seasons in Dallas, lines up a three-ball, my mind sees a righty Trevor Booker. Both players could have remodeled Barclays Center with all the bricks they threw up.
Listening to Vaughn’s remarks to the media, he applauds these shot profiles. Actually, he would have his players go further, urging them to hoist even more three-pointers.
I’m not going to argue the math in the analytics behind the strategy. However, not all three-pointers are created equal. It was a lot easier for, say, Finney-Smith and Spencer Dinwiddie to be efficient long-range shooters when they were given a host of wide open looks because defenses were intensely concentrated on Mavs star Luke Doncic.
These Nets do not have that luxury. Their spot-up shooters are no longer the beneficiaries from KD and Kyrie’s extraordinary ability to maneuver defenses and force the help that leaves them free behind the arc. As a result, Brooklyn is 24th in the league in offensive efficiency per 100 possessions over their last six games.
The only way this gets better is if the Nets rely more on ball/player movement and precision in execution (See: Heat, Miami). NBA.com tracks “paint touches per game”—Brooklyn had the third-fewest in the league over their last five games entering Tuesday’s contest and I’d bet, based on my eye test of how they attacked Milwaukee, that the number won’t improve after the site is updated.
Sure, they ranked a mere 27th in the metric before this stretch, but it was irrelevant because Durant and Irving allowed them to be historically proficient (a league-leading 51%--no team has topped 50% this century, per NBA.com) pulling up from mid-range areas. The post-trade Nets have shot 45.3% on mid-range jumpers, which is pretty good, but not good enough to warrant breaking the analytics model.
Look, the Nets did manage to feature some more pleasing inside-out sequences that led to missed three-point opportunities on Tuesday night—that’s the nature of a make-or-miss league. But it wasn’t nearly enough. You could hear the sellout crowd groan as the Nets were stuck on 90 points for 4:23 of the fourth quarter, which included a string of six consecutive three-point misfires, almost all of which were taken early in the shot clock.
Vaughn, who was Atkinson’s assistant over the course of Brooklyn’s progression from developing doormats to the spunky team that reached the 2019 postseason, is in a tough spot, having to integrate four new starters with little practice time. One of his better facilitators, Ben Simmons, has missed the last three games with knee soreness and will also be out for Wednesday’s back-to-back game at the Knicks. And it’s not Vaughn’s fault that his General Manager, Sean Marks, supplied him with only one legitimate NBA center in Nic Claxton all season.
Still, the Nets recently gave him a contract extension because they believed in his ability to get the most of his group. Vaughn did more with less in the 2020 bubble. The least one should expect from this iteration is to not bring flashbacks to those otherwise forgettable Atkinson seasons.