Vaughn’s Rosy Glasses Obscuring The Obvious Necessity Of Removing Harris From Nets’ Rotation
Many coaches have a blind spot for certain players, where they give underperformers extra chances they probably didn’t deserve to find their games. Would Jets Head Coach Robert Saleh have pulled the plug on Zach Wilson this week if not for some ill-advised comments by the young quarterback after last Sunday’s loss? We’ll never know, but there are plenty of insiders who thought Saleh would have otherwise given Wilson one more shot despite a 20-game record of ineffectiveness.
It's a very different dynamic, but count Nets Head Coach Jacque Vaughn in the Irrational Faith club when it comes to wing Joe Harris. The fourth quarter of the Nets’ 128-117 loss in Indiana on Friday night wasn’t Vaughn’s finest half hour, and it started because he couldn’t see the obvious: Whether Harris is still under the effects from multiple ankle surgeries or this is who he now is, he has been a negative ingredient in Brooklyn’s rotation for the last three games, and many others before that.
Friday’s 0-for-3 outing dropped Harris’ shooting split on the season to 36.6/33.3/55.6, levels that he hasn’t seen since his abbreviated 2015-16 campaign where he suited up for just five games with Cleveland.
To be fair, Harris has had a couple of games in the last two weeks that inspired hope that he had rediscovered his shooting groove. But then he’d quickly revert to missing the sort of wide-open three-point attempts that used to be automatic. Given at least six feet of space, he converted 55.6% of his three-pointers over the last three seasons, according to NBA.com’s tracking. Going into Friday, he was 11-for-27 (40.7%) on the same looks this season. He can’t even attack closeouts with the zeal and lift that used to round his game so nicely.
Never fleet afoot in his healthy days, Harris seems a step-plus slower of late, which has been allowing opponents to go at him unmercifully. All the hustle plays have dried up too. In the last three games as the closest defender, his man is shooting 53.6% on 28 field goal attempts in only 49 minutes of action, per NBA.com. Only Seth Curry has fared worse, and that’s on just 15 field goal attempts over 52 minutes. In other words, Harris has been playing with a big Target logo around the “Nets” insignia on the front of his uniform.
It's sad because Harris has always been a fan favorite as the longest-tenured Net who was the poster child for the team’s development culture in the pre-Kevin Durant/Kyrie Irving era. A 2014 second-round pick by Cleveland, Harris was one of those unsung free agents signed by General Manager Sean Marks when the organization was bereft of assets. With a relentless work ethic, Harris raised his perimeter shooting efficiency to a degree where he could win the league’s three-point crown twice in three seasons, even besting Golden State’s Stephen Curry in the three-point contest at the 2019 All-Star Weekend. Harris was rewarded in 2020 with a 4-year, $75 million contract extension.
Unfortunately, a bad fall last November ended his 2021-22 campaign after just 14 games. His loss was a huge blow to Brooklyn’s prospects, for the gravity he provided the offense just couldn’t be replicated on a team that had loaded up on more defensive-oriented wings the previous offseason.
In March, we learned that the initial surgery failed to eradicate the pain, so Harris went under the knife again to reconstruct the ankle’s ligaments. Given the enormity of the procedure, it was always assumed that he would need some time to ramp up into his old form.
But we’re now about a quarter into the season and something is obviously still off. From a coach’s standpoint, it doesn’t matter why when making on-the-fly personnel decisions. Even if they don’t miss shots, make careless passes, or fail to execute defensive assignments on the court, the coach is supposed to help put the team in the best position to win games. Vaughn, who’s record dropped to 7-6 since replacing Steve Nash on Brooklyn’s bench, decidedly did not do that in Indiana.
Once I saw that Vaughn inexplicably did not stagger the KD/Kyrie minutes while the Nets maintained a six-point advantage after three quarters, I knew the tide was soon about to turn. The dread proved to be warranted when Vaughn sent out the following lineup to start the final frame—Nic Claxton, Ben Simmons, Markieff Morris, Curry, and Harris. It’s hard to find a more ill-fitting, five-man unit in today’s NBA. By the time Durant and Irving checked back in a little over three minutes later, the Pacers were on an 11-2 run and never trailed again.
Even with Yuta Watanabe and T.J. Warren inactive with injuries, Vaughn had options in lieu of the obviously struggling Harris. Cam Thomas could have been useful in that group to initiate offense. Since the Pacers opened the quarter with T.J. McConnell, the undersized Patty Mills, a 38% three-point shooter this season, wouldn’t have been exposed on defense. Heck, even Kessler Edwards deserved an opportunity before going back to Harris.
Vaughn, though, is a true believer in Harris. In so doing, he set up the environment that enabled the momentum to shift in Indiana’s favor. With speed and spacing an issue, the Nets’ offense ground to a halt and they allowed Pacers rookie Benedict Mathurin to start cooking. Playing from behind, the Nets then got sloppy, turning the ball over eight times in the fourth quarter. Only Durant’s 20-point quarter saved Brooklyn from a more savage beatdown, though you could argue that his isolation-heavy tactics created an unintended consequence—after accumulating 26 assists through three quarters, Brooklyn totaled exactly one in the final 12 minutes.
To be clear, for this I’m pinning the loss on Vaughn, not on a guy who only played 12 minutes like Harris. A coach is supposed to see his players through clear glasses, not rosy ones. If Harris is still in the rotation for Sunday’s game against visiting Portland, then Brooklyn, we have a problem.