New Coach, Same Old Nets
In advance of his first game as Nets Head Coach after replacing the dismissed Jacque Vaughn on Monday, Kevin Ollie told the media that one of his goals was to add “a little more spacing” into Brooklyn’s offense.
As if Ollie wasn’t already aware, it’s a lot harder to implement your best-laid plans when you can’t pick the players like he did when he won the 2014 NCAA title at UConn. The host Raptors promptly gave Ollie a rude awakening into the pro head coaching world by mashing Brooklyn, 121-93, on Thursday night. Combined with Boston’s 136-86 rout in Vaughn’s final game last week, the combined 78-point margin of defeat was the worst over any two consecutive games in Nets history.
So on one hand you may conclude that the Nets’ freefall into oblivion (9-25 over their last 34 games) isn’t all on the coach, but what exactly did Ollie do differently? For this purpose, I’d like to focus on how he could have possibly schemed better spacing given the lineup combinations he deployed on Thursday.
Perusing NBA.com, Brooklyn used 20 different five-man lineups prior to the final four minutes when both teams emptied their benches. 15 of them, totaling about 37.5 minutes, included at least two non-shooters, defined as those players whose three-point percentages are under 30% this season, namely Nic Claxton, Ben Simmons, Day’Ron Sharpe, and Dennis Smith Jr.
It went as expected—Brooklyn looked like a high school team in committing 20 turnovers, half of them of the live ball variety. Those steals plus the runouts from shooting 41% from the floor (29.7% from deep) fed the Raptors’ fast break to the tune of 46 points in transition, the most the Nets have ever allowed in a game since the stat was first tracked in 1996-97.
If the Nets still rostered Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, two of the greatest three-level shot creators in the game’s history, maybe they could have found a way to work around the clogged paints resulting from having two teammates who need not be guarded unless they’re at the basket. Unfortunately, those days are long gone, and neither Mikal Bridges nor Cam Thomas are good enough one-on-one against those stacked odds to provide sustainable scoring.
To be fair, it’s not like the Nets were playing like gangbusters in the true four-out sets on Thursday. Dennis Schroder and Lonnie Walker IV, who combined to go 5-for-20 from the floor, were among the biggest culprits during those other 6.5 minutes where Brooklyn was outscored, 19-8.
However, it should be noted that none of those runs boasted Simmons as the point center, the position where the Nets have seen some of their better offensive performances this season. Instead, Claxton and Sharpe split the center minutes, which did nearly nothing to juice the attack other than a pair of offensive rebounds from each.
This shouldn’t be that difficult for a supposedly analytics-driven organization like the Nets to see. The NBA.com net ratings data shows that Simmons/Claxton and Simmons/Sharpe have gotten crushed; Simmons with four other shooters stands a fighting stance, at least on the offensive end. Of course, that means Ollie would have to have some uncomfortable conversations with players who probably won’t take it well if they’re benched, maybe more so by an interim coach.
As much as Nets fans hope the coaching change can spur a good enough run for Brooklyn to secure a play-in seed, this loss should be an eye-opener. This was Toronto, one of the four teams under Brooklyn in the Eastern Conference standings, not Boston. The Nets (21-34) dropped to three full games under Atlanta for the 10th and final playoff seed.
Forget what you’ve read about the strength, or relative lack thereof, of Brooklyn’s remaining schedule. Until Ollie gets real about his new team, it will be the Same Old Nets.