Structural And Tactical Deficiencies Reared Ugly Head During Nets’ Late-Game Unraveling Vs Bucks
So, what did I miss?
When Kevin Durant finished off a spectacular sequence with an alley-oop dunk off a fast break initiated by the sneaky hands of center Andre Drummond on the other end to give the Nets a 108-99 lead over the Bucks with 3:52 remaining, I headed for the Barclays Center exit to beat the traffic.
Of course, I was able to listen to the exquisite voices of WFAN radio announcers Chris Carrino and Tim Capstraw as they described the ensuing meltdown during the drive and then reviewed the DVR when I got home, so I am well aware of how Brooklyn’s brutal 120-119 defeat in overtime on Thursday metastasized.
Sorry, there’s no positive spin on this one. It hurts.
This wasn’t a case where the Nets showed up with one of their G-League level lineups—unless Ben Simmons gets an appointment with Miracle Max of “The Princess Bride” to cure his back woes in the next two weeks, Brooklyn’s rotation on Thursday night, with one minor tweak (no Kessler Edwards 5:35 run), was about as close to what you’ll see from them in the playoffs as what can be accommodated in a regular season game. The Nets even got a big break when Milwaukee All-Star Khris Middleton was ejected in the fourth quarter for a dangerous foul on Bruce Brown’s dunk attempt. Other than that, though, neither team could be excused as “shorthanded” or “rest-disadvantaged.”
Nor did Brooklyn fail to come out of the gate with the requisite compete level, or “edge” as Head Coach Steve Nash called it after Tuesday’s squeaker past bottom-feeding Detroit. No, the Nets played like they needed the game, swarming on defense to force 23 Bucks turnovers. They registered 12 steals and 7 blocked shots, three by Brown while contesting perimeter jump shots. It was night-and-day compared with the effort from the Pistons game.
The fact is that the Nets did need this game, for the loss left Brooklyn (40-37) tied with Charlotte and Atlanta for the Eastern Conference’s 8-through-10 seeds with only five games remaining. By virtue of the three-way tiebreaker, the Nets are still in eighth place, which is a big deal—the 9/10 seeds face single elimination and must win both play-in games to advance into the first round while the 7/8 seeds must be beaten twice to be eliminated.
It wasn’t just the result--the manner in which the Nets blew it was more disturbing, for it underscored the team’s weaknesses that might inhibit their chances at a deep postseason run. Some of it, as I’ve mentioned ad nauseum all season (feel free to peruse the archives), is structural, since Brooklyn is over-reliant on Durant and Kyrie Irving to manufacture offense in lineups that often include two non-shooters. In comparison, when Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo confronts a defensive wall, all of his teammates are threats from three-point ranges—the extra spacing makes a huge difference.
The other is tactical, and that lies with Nash. Forget for the moment that he continues to trust James Johnson, this time for 10 minutes, during which the Nets were minus-7. The biggest issue was that it’s hard enough to stop Giannis in transition, with his freakish stride and reach, so you can’t make the halfcourt game easier for him by having smaller players switch onto him as part of the game plan. What’s Nets 6-foot 3 guard Seth Curry supposed to do when tasked with keeping Antetokounmpo out of the paint, other than foul him or surrender the two points? Many times the switches occurred when Giannis was the screener, when his defender can back up to allow enough room for his screened teammate to squeeze through an opening. There’s no need to switch those.
Down the stretch, all these types of mistakes were magnified in a crash course on how to blow a ballgame. It started with an offensive rebound putback by Wes Matthews off a missed Giannis free throw, made even more egregious in that it came immediately after a timeout and Nash didn’t notice that Brown, not the significantly taller KD, was on the inside lane line responsible for boxing out Matthews.
What followed was a deluge of gaffes, from two missed Drummond free throws to another second chance Milwaukee bucket (by the way, wasn’t the Drummond inclusion in the James Harden trade supposed to cure the Nets’ rebounding problems? Since Drummond’s first game on February 14, the Nets are 27th in defensive rebounding percentage and, with Drummond on the floor, the team rebounds just under 70% of opponent’s missed shots, which would rank last in the NBA) to excessive fouling that allowed Milwaukee to shoot six free throws in the last three minutes plus another six in the overtime. An unnecessary Brown shove while setting a screen for Durant was as much a crunch time offensive killer as all the missed shots.
Some of those Brooklyn’ looks were of decent quality, but even Nash admitted afterwards that the team did not get organized properly to run their actions on several key possessions. Yet Nash, as he so often does, left unused timeouts on the table in both regulation and overtime.
To top it off, Nash’s end-of-game play calls were, “Give it to KD and get out of the way” with no movement or proper spacing. The end of the fourth quarter was most unconscionable. Tied at 110-110, the Nets had 18 seconds to get off the final shot. It’s fine to start the possession with KD in the middle of the floor, but having Seth Curry, Goran Dragic and Patty Mills all standing next to each other in the left corner, with Irving alone in the right corner, allowed Antetokounmpo to dart in for a late double team once Durant made his move forward, forcing KD into a really tough look.
One regular season loss doesn’t mean much once the playoffs begin but it should put an end to the narrative that the East’s top teams are ‘scared” to face Brooklyn in the first round. To the contrary, until someone knocks off the defending champs, it would be wiser to “Fear the Deer.”