How The Nets Stay Competitive
Over the past 10-15 games, the Nets have been competitive in every single game in spurts. The most glaring example of the Nets’ Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde act was their game against the Portland Trailblazers. In the first half, the Nets were down 19 points and only scored 37 points, that’s pretty bad. In the 3rd quarter, the Nets scored 33 points and cut the lead to 7. That’s pretty good. Since we usually focus on the bad (we don’t do it intentionally), I want to focus on the good of the third quarter for the Nets, showing what they did (and need to do moving forward) and how they did it.
Offense
On offense, the Nets came out of the gate clicking. The biggest thing is that they were running their sets all the way through. We know the Nets sets, some of them are pretty good and some of them aren’t, but the biggest problem for the Nets isn’t the actual set. It is that the Nets’ players seem to get antsy when running things, and plays never get run correctly, or all the way through. Look at this video though.
This is a play that the Nets run at least 10-15 times a game (not exaggerating), and I think that this is the best they ever ran it. The first thing is Brook, look how he sets up Devin’s man for the screen. He fakes a seal, spins, and hits a screen. Trenton Hassell remains patient knowing the play is developing and waits for Devin to get open. Devin gets open, and knocks down the jumper. If the Nets ran all of their sets as hard as that, they would get so many more open jumpers.