Three Takeaways From Nets’ Six-Game Road Trip
The Nets flew back to Brooklyn on Sunday night after winning their fifth game of a season-long six-game road trip, 120-96, in Oklahoma City.
Other than the normal rigors of travel in the COVID-19 era, it wasn’t the most arduous of excursions, as the Nets took care of business versus the five opponents not expected to make the postseason while falling to a rising Bulls squad on the back end of a back-to-back. All such stretches, however, provide opportunities to measure a team under the adversity of the NBA road, from how it responds to uneven officiating and allowable physicality to its execution when the games are on the line.
Here are my top three takeaways:
1) Beard Growth
As a guest on a recent Maybe Nets Time podcast, I was asked how concerned Nets fans should be about James Harden, who was scuffling a bit at the start of the season as he rounded himself into basketball shape following a summer of rehab on his injured hamstring from last season. My answer was an absolute hedge: Concerned? Absolutely. Conclusively concerned? No chance.
There was no question that Harden was more like his old self on the road trip than he was in the previous eight games, averaging 21.2 ppg on a 47/38.6/84.2 shooting split. You can tell that he’s adjusting to the new rules by learning to focus on finishing his drives through contact instead of attempting to initiate it with the goal of drawing a foul.
Still, as Nets Head Coach Steve Nash always points out, he’s not quite there. When a primary defender gets into his grill to take away the step-back three-ball, like Toronto and Orlando did, Harden can maneuver around them quite easily. Otherwise, like on Sunday against OKC’s packed paint, there’s been too much dribble in place followed by a pass or chuck late in the shot clock.
Overall, his drives per game are ticking up, according to NBA.com. Whereas he had been averaging around 17-17.5 drives over the last five seasons (with a league-leading 19.6 outlier in 2018-19), he was down to 11.1 per game before the trip. Well, he must have felt comfortable enough on the road to turn up the aggressiveness factor, because he averaged 16.2 drives over the trip’s first five games before Lu Dort and the Thunder D held him to 8 on Sunday.
An overabundance of turnovers (33 in 6 games), especially the careless ones, are also signs that he’s still not operating at peak efficiency. The question then, is if he’s gotten himself back up to, say, 80% of where he once was, is this where it plateaus, or does he still have it in him to turn it up more notches?
We’ll just have to wait and see.
2) No stars = No offense
Credit YES Network postgame show co-host Frank Isola for being one of the few members of the Nets media to join me in the chorus for urging Nash to make it his business to stagger Harden’s and Kevin Durant’s minutes.
As I wrote earlier this season, Nash typically allows KD to play the entire first and third quarters, with Harden subbing out a few minutes early. Too often, that’s not enough rest for Harden to join the bench mob at the start of the second and fourth quarters.
The results have been ugly—I tweeted on Sunday that by my unofficial count, I could not recall one no-star Brooklyn run where the team scored more points than its number of offensive possessions. Well, here’s the actual data: The most commonly-used all-bench unit (22 minutes) of LaMarcus Aldridge, Paul Millsap, Patty Mills, DeAndre’ Bembry, and Jevon Carter is averaging 86 points per 100 possessions, per NBA.com (which is higher than I expected, skewed by the one game in Orlando where that group managed to put up 25 points in 8 minutes).
Another lineup with Joe Harris in for Carter has posted an 85 offensive rating in 9 minutes, and the one used in Sunday’s second quarter, with James Johnson in place of the absent Millsap (personal reasons), is down to 60 after a three-minute stint that saw one Mills three-pointer made in six offensive possessions.
Fortunately, Nash got Harden out early enough in the third quarter so that he could start the fourth. Not that it then went swimmingly, with the Thunder whittling a 20-point deficit in half, but the shift in the game began when Nash subbed out Mills for Bruce Brown, thereby saddling Harden with two non-shooters on the court. Durant then reentered and the Nets quickly pulled away for good.
The point is that Nash must (MUST!) stagger his two stars’ minutes when the schedule toughens, starting with Tuesday’s showdown with Golden State. Otherwise, the Chicago loss, which turned at the start of the fourth quarter, could easily become commonplace.
3) Pray for KD’s shoulder (and all other body parts)
You all know who he is. Durant has opened the season on fire, averaging a league-high 29.6 ppg after Sunday’s 33-point outburst in his former Oklahoma City stomping grounds. The shooting efficiency is staggering. I saw a tweet with his shot chart—it was almost entirely green, an indication that he was shooting at least 10 percentage points over the league average from all those sections on the floor.
For the people who mention Stephon Curry as one of KD’s competitors for the league MVP award, the Warriors star guard with a 28.1 ppg average has a shooting split of 44.2/38.7/95.5. Piker—Durant is shooting at an ungodly 58.6/42.4/84 clip. Now also take into account the fact that 187 of Durant’s 262 field goal attempts (71.3%) were put up when he was deemed by NBA.com as tightly-guarded. He’s made 57.8% of those, including 39.4% from deep. That’s insane. Just under 45% of Curry’s shots have been contested that tightly.
Durant’s all-around game has also been exceptional, as he leads the Nets with 8.4 rebounds per game and trails only Harden with 5.1 assists per game. As the closest defender, he’s allowed opponents to shoot 42% from the floor.
The only thing could possibly hold Durant back this season seems to be his health, which is why Nets fans have been cringing along with him every time he grabs at his right shoulder. Nash calmly noted in Sunday’s postgame press conference that Durant “has a little tweak but (as he peaked at the stat sheet and smiled) the ball still goes in the hole.”
With Kyrie Irving effectively banned from the team until he opts to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, Harden not quite all the way back, and Harris exiting Sunday’s game with a sprained ankle, the Nets have no choice but to ride Durant’s supremacy to build on their 10-4 start. Such a workload may call for some load management down the road (Wednesday’s home back-to-back versus Cleveland?) because the Nets’ mission is still to be healthy in mid-April, not to win every game in November.