New-Look Nets Will Attempt To Maintain Hold On Playoff Seed With Defensive Identity
After the dust had settled from the Nets teardown at Thursday’s NBA trade deadline, Brooklyn Head Coach Jacque Vaughn undoubtedly wished he could petition the league to run a midseason training camp.
Brooklyn said farewell to a pair of the most talented players in the game in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving (along with reserves T.J. Warren and Markieff Morris) and replaced them with four new pieces that Vaughn will need to integrate as quickly as possible in order for the team to hold onto their playoff standing.
Who are these guys? Well, as is customary in the era of General Manager Sean Marks, the new-look Nets are overloaded in some areas and drastically deficient in others. Nic Claxton is still the only legitimate NBA center on the roster.
Somehow though, Marks has managed to secure the services of three of the top 3-and-D wings from last season’s Western Conference teams, as Mikal Bridges, who was acquired from Phoenix in the KD trade, and Doran Finney-Smith, who was shipped from Dallas as part of the Irving trade, have joined Royce O’Neale, Marks’ offseason pickup from Utah. It would have been a grand slam except Marks flipped Jae Crowder to Milwaukee for two second-round picks after his inclusion in the Durant deal.
While it is said you can never have too many players with these highly-valued skillsets, it does leave Vaughn with some practical puzzles to solve. Bridges, who along with fellow former Sun Cam Johnson sat out Thursday night’s 116-105 victory over visiting Chicago, is the most accomplished scorer of the trio, but it’s not like he has a record of success with the ball in his hands when the shot clock winds down. When Devin Booker was injured, he and the Suns struggled.
That’s no longer Phoenix’s problem now that Durant is in tow, but it sure is in Brooklyn. Other than newly-acquired Spencer Dinwiddie and 21-year old sophomore Cam Thomas, the Nets are devoid of playmakers/shot creators.
That’s why many of Brooklyn’s possessions, especially in the last four minutes on Thursday, were so hideous it made me avert my eyes from the TNT broadcast. The Nets needed some difficult shotmaking by Thomas and Dinwiddie and fortunate bailout whistles from the refs to close out the victory.
On the other hand, the Nets’ uptick in defensive activity was quite noticeable, and it only figures to improve when Bridges, who placed second in last season’s Defensive Player of the Year voting, and Claxton, the league’ second-best shot blocker who sat out Thursday’s contest with right hamstring tightness, bolster their lineup.
That makes the rest of this Nets season an interesting experiment. Though they’re in pretty good shape at 33-22, a game behind Cleveland for fifth place int eh Eastern Conference with a tough home game versus Philadelphia up next on Saturday, the test will be if or how soon they can coalesce around this new defensive identity.
The Sixers game will give us a better gage as to how this team will function than what we saw on Thursday, when the Bulls bricked 21 of their first 24 three-pointers before knocking down a pair in the final minute when the game was decided. In a make-or-miss league, it’s possible all the Bulls misses made the Nets D appear more impressive than it was.
As the team moves forward, so many questions need to be resolved: Can all these elite defenders clamp down enough to offset the glaring offensive shortcomings? Can they win enough to avoid the play-in round? How will Vaughn manage the minutes?
As for the latter issue, here’s a quick stab at an ideal Nets rotation, assuming everyone is healthy (don’t chuckle):
Starters: Dinwiddie, Thomas, O’Neale, Bridges, Claxton
Rotation Reserves: Seth Curry, Joe Harris, Johnson, Finney-Smith, Ben Simmons
Extras: Yuta Watanabe, Patty Mills, Day’Ron Sharpe, Edmund Sumner
I kept Harris and Simmons in the rotation with great hesitation, since I can’t see Vaughn outright benching either, no matter how much they deserve it. To be fair, both played decently on Thursday, with Harris going off for 18 points by knocking down all six of his attempts from behind the arc in the second quarter and Simmons impacting the game with his ball movement and pace. Simmons even scored 8 points on 7 field goal attempts. Still, it says something that the Nets were minus-11 and minus-12, respectively in each of their respective minutes. The bottom line is that the Nets will likely have to win games with their defense, and Harris continues to play with a huge target on his back on that end while Simmons is totally miscast as a five. Personally, I’d rather see Watanabe elevated to the ninth man, but my guess is that he’ll only be getting regular runs because the Nets will always have someone injured.
Even with KD and Kyrie gone, that part never changes in Brooklyn.
Publishers Note: I will be taking an indefinite break from posting, so this will be the final Nets newsletter until I return.