Stars Sharing Ball Set Tone For Nets’ Play-In Victory Over Cavs
Cavs Head Coach J.B. Bickerstaff’s defensive game plan for Tuesday night’s 7/8 play-in game against the Nets couldn’t have been more obvious—get the ball out of superstars Kevin Durant’s and Kyrie Irving’s hands and make The Other Guys beat his club.
When Bickerstaff was handed the first quarter stat sheet that saw the following: KD & Kyrie field goal attempts 8, Other Guys FGA 16, despite the duo playing all but Irving’s 1:28 rest period during the frame, you’d think he’d be pleased.
Of course, the scoreboard at the time read: Nets 40, Cavs 20. Bickerstaff had every right to throw that piece of paper up in the air in disgust.
Not only did Nets’ complementary starter Bruce Brown and the center combination of Andre Drummond/Nic Claxton combine to score 47 points on 21-for-36 shooting from the floor, Durant and Irving also got theirs in Brooklyn’s 115-108 victory that had the sellout Barclays Center crowd on their feet for much of the night.
The Nets are now officially playoff-bound, with the second-seeded Celtics up next starting on Sunday in Boston. We know seeding doesn’t matter to Brooklyn. KD (25 points, 9-for-16 shooting on Tuesday) and Kyrie (34 points, 12-for-15 after making his first 12 shots from the floor) will give even elite defenses like Boston’s fits with their innate scoring ability. But when the dynamic duo plays like they did on Tuesday, moving the ball to the point where each posted double-digit assists, opponents are in deep trouble.
Brooklyn got negligible production (6 points, 2-for-9 shooting from three-point land) from its two primary floor spacers, Seth Curry and Patty Mills, against a Cavs club missing defensive anchor and former Net Jarrett Allen, yet the Nets managed to score at a rate of 118.6 points per 100 possessions, an efficiency that would have led the league if sustained over a full season, per NBA.com.
No matter what Cleveland tried—blitzing pick-and-rolls, a variety of zones, or flat-out double-teaming the ball—the Nets had answers for them. The reason: The willingness of their stars to make the best basketball plays, even when things got a little dicey in the second half.
KD likes to remind the media that he’s been a willing passer for most of his career. This season, though, with Brooklyn’s lineup constantly in flux and mostly bereft of secondary playmakers, he has been forced to take that part of his game to a new level. He averaged 6.4 assists per game, bettering his previous career-high by about 0.5 apg. As for Irving, his handles and shotmaking are so mesmerizing that his mere probing can freeze a defense, thereby allowing a teammate to sneak into an open area. The ensuing nifty passes only seem like adjuncts to his highlight reel.
On Tuesday, exquisite feeds from Durant (11) and Irving (12) didn’t just result in official assists; there were also plenty of “hockey assists” where the intermediary’s pass was the one that was credited on the final scoresheet.
NBA.com’s tracking of seven secondary assists seems way undercounted since I’d gather that most of Brown’s eight helpers on the night were initiated by a Durant or Irving pass out of the pick-and-roll or double team. Still, that’s nearly twice the team’s average per game during the regular season and their 306 total passes were a 15% increase over their season rate.
Brown tallied five assists in the fourth quarter, including a pair to Claxton for dunks in crunch time when the game was still in doubt. Both of those plays started when Brown flashed into the middle when Cleveland sent extra defenders at Irving and then Durant. Brown then drew help defenders before seeing Claxton open under the basket, the latter an alley-oop dunk that put the Nets up by eight points with 54 seconds remaining.
Brown doesn’t always make the best decisions on those reads, too often challenging taller defenders at the rim or with difficult floaters When he does make that extra pass, though, it’s beautiful basketball.
But make no mistake, it was the Nets’ stars who set the tone with The Other Guys along for the ride.
_________________________________________________________________________
Much speculation on the status of Ben Simmons has some folks getting all jazzed about Brooklyn’s chances going forward. Both ESPN and The Athletic believe the Nets are targeting Game 3 of the Celtics series at Barclays Center for the three-time All-Star’s first outing as a member of his new team since the blockbuster February 10 trade of James Harden to Philadelphia.
It will actually mark Simmons’ first appearance in any NBA game in about 10 months, as he claimed he wasn’t mentally ready to suit up for the Sixers this season and then sustained a herniated disc in his back while ramping up in Brooklyn.
Not to dump cold water on anything, but this isn’t close to a done deal. Simmons has several hurdles to plow through, any of which could trigger a setback in an area that is awfully tricky to work back into shape.
Even if he makes it through the 1-on-1s, the 3-on-3s, and then the 5-on-5s, how ready will he be to step back onto the court in the midst of a playoff series? Maybe he can take the backup Durant minutes that went to an overmatched Kessler Edwards on Tuesday, when the rookie whose two-way deal was just converted to a standard NBA contract misfired on all five of his field goal attempts and struggled defending Cleveland veteran Kevin Love in 8 minutes.
Unless Brown’s much-improved three-point shooting suddenly regresses to the mean, I wouldn’t assume Simmons would automatically usurp him in the Nets’ rotation. It’s been hard enough for Nets Head Coach Steve Nash to develop any kind of continuity with his club this season; now that the Nets are getting there, the last thing he needs is to integrate a new piece who isn’t a threat to score outside the paint on the fly, even if that piece is a 6-foot 10 defensive stopper with excellent playmaking skills.
If the Nets can get Simmons up to about 15 minutes per game at any point this postseason, that’s a win. Even then, with his floor-spacing and free throw issues that come with him, the margin of that victory might not be all that material.