Three Observations From First Nets Preseason Game That Deserve More Looks
The anxiety Nets fans experienced all summer is gone. Phew. Let the anxiety about what this team can do this season begin.
Brooklyn opened its four-game preseason slate on Monday night with a 127-108 loss at Barclays Center to a Philadelphia squad that sat superstars Joel Embiid and James Harden. Not that such a beating is cause for alarm; every pro sports team’s primary mission for exhibition games is to get out of them in good health. All other results can be flushed away with the toilet water. I mean, how many games has Nets sharpshooter Joe Harris ever played where he air-balled his first two three-pointers like he did on Monday, both on open looks? Maybe when he was 8.
While everyone was paying attention to Ben Simmons’ every move in his first NBA game since June 2021—against his former team, no less---and how he meshed with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving on the court, my mind drifted to a few less obvious things that transpired which piqued my interest—meaning, I want to see more:
1) Switching from switching
The NBA isn’t the NFL, where you don’t want to put new wrinkles on preseason film. There isn’t much NBA teams haven’t seen before, so the best way to use the preseason is to iron out the kinks for whatever schemes you plan to run when the games count. The Nets even broke out a couple of Spain pick-and-roll offensive sets against the Sixers.
Defensively, though, I saw a lot of…confusion. Under Head Coach Steve Nash, the Nets had been almost exclusively a “switch everything” defensive team for the past two seasons. On-ball, off-ball—it didn’t matter. While such a scheme has its benefits, opponents were able to dictate matchups on the perimeter and in the paint, which is how elite teams press their advantages.
On Monday, though, it appeared that Brooklyn was attempting to get away from such a rigid order, utilizing drop coverages even with switch-a-holic center Nic Claxton on the floor. I thought I even heard Nets coaches screaming “Ice!” at one point, but not at the volume Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau uses when directing his team to steer a pick-and-roll ballhandler to the sideline that I could be sure.
In any event, it's always better if a team can present multiple defensive looks, but it will take time for it to master them. Too often the Nets let the Sixers, particularly guard Tyrese Maxey, get wherever they wanted on the floor with little obstruction. It’s not a good sign when two Nets looked at each other as if to say, “I thought you had him.”
Also, since this was Simmons’ long-awaited debut, he wasn’t at his screen-busting best. If Sunday’s was a game of any importance, I would have expected him to stick with Maxey like a magnet.
The Nets understand that their aspirations will be curtailed again unless they improve their 20th-ranked defensive efficiency from last season. It starts (assuming they pick up their correct assignment in transition, which wasn’t always the case on Monday either) with their techniques in countering opponents screens. Switching can’t be everything.
3) Markieff Morris with the second unit
I’m not going to rant about Nash’s rotation in a preseason game—there could be a host of reasons why Day’Ron Sharpe was the first big off the bench on Monday while Morris didn’t see any action until the third quarter, and then for only nine minutes.
Morris, a vet minimum free agent signing this offseason, suffered a serious neck injury during an altercation with Nuggets star Nikola Jokic last season and played only three minutes during Miami’s run to the Eastern Conference Finals. At six-foot nine and 245 pounds, he’s a bit undersized for a center and doesn’t have the same rim protection capability at age 33 that he may have once had.
However, what he does have is a three-point shot that ought to be respected, something the sophomore Sharpe, only 20, is still developing. When the Nets run their second units with the non-shooting Simmons as the lead guard, having a floor spacing big as opposed to a typical lobs/blocks guy is way more ideal. In fact, you could already see the issues in Brooklyn’s half-court offense when Simmons and Nic Claxton were paired together on the court with the starters. It wasn’t a coincidence that the Nets’ best half-court stretch occurred when Patty Mills replaced Simmons in the second quarter. The difference in how open the middle of the floor was in that span was too obvious.
No one should be looking to Morris to play more than 12-15 minutes per game. I do believe, though, that the team would be more effective with him as the backup 5 rather than Sharpe.
3) Edmond Sumner’s defense
Oddly, the book on Sumner coming out of college was that his length and wingspan would make him a plus defender at the higher level while his shooting would be problematic, and since he was 22 when selected out of Xavier by New Orleans in the second of the 2017 NBA Draft, his upside was considered limited.
Well, my first glimpse of Sumner as a Net after he signed a partially guaranteed free agent contract this offseason was that he looked 17, not 26. More importantly, in his first outing since tearing an Achilles during a preseason workout in September 2021, Sumner showed impressive combo guard skills, whether it was getting to the rim and finishing or finding teammates. Though he didn’t attempt any three-pointers, he knocked down 39.8% of them during his last season with Indiana. He looked like a viable backup point guard option, with one exception…
The defense though--yuck. The blow-bys, lackadaisical screen navigations, and neglect in boxing out aren’t going to cut it if he has any hope of cracking Nash’s rotation (and since he’s only guaranteed $250,000 until opening night in two weeks and then $500,000 until January 10, he could be the first Net on the chopping block should General Manager Sean Marks find a roster upgrade).
Again, it was just a preseason game, so I’m cutting Sumner some slack. However, if this is who he is, sorry, the Nets can only have one Cam Thomas on the roster.