Nets Are Scorching

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Box – Queen City Hoops – Rufus on Fire

It’s not very often where the Nets play as poorly as they did and there’s still reason to celebrate, but last night’s 94-89 victory over the Charlotte Bobcats in Charlotte, marked a couple of milestones.

In the ongoing debate of what would happen first, another Nets road victory, or a Brook Lopez double-double in regulation, those who picked “push” would be be the big winners after last night. The Nets win was their first road victory since December 21 in Memphis and after finishing with 31 points and 11 (!) rebounds, the Brookie Monster had his first regulation double-double of the year (his only other double-double was December 3′s triple OT game against OKC). The fact that both of these occurrences happened in the same game, may be cause for celebration, but it was  Nets/Bobcats game, which means there was a lot of ugly in this game to sift through to get to these silver linings.

For starters, despite having 50 points at the half and leading the entire game from the opining tip, the Nets only shot 40.7 percent from the field, including a terrible 14 percent (2-14) from three point land. What’s worse is despite getting to the free throw line 34 times, they only sank 22 freebies, good for 64 percent. The lack of execution from the free throw line was especially dicey in the closing moments where the Nets nearly blew an 11-point lead in the final 90 seconds after Sasha Vujacic of all players went one out of two from the charity stripe twice in the closing seconds. Sasha is usually so clutch in those situations, which is forgivable, but the Nets lacked focus at the line for most of the night (Travis Outlaw in the first half got fouled on a three pointer from the corner and only went 1-3 during the possession. Inexcusable) and they typically lose these games when they struggle to get easy points.

But the Nets obviously did enough right to pull out the win. For starters, they only turned the ball over five times. Unlike their victory against New Orleans on Wednesday, they didn’t rely exclusively on the long ball to win and were able to grind out 42 points in the paint (mostly thanks to Lopez – more on that in a bit). And most importantly, they were able to hold off the Bobcats when they needed too most, especially after a 19-point third quarter lead had been whittled down to four in the final three minutes of the game. Devin Harris, who quietly had a solid bounceback game with 16 points and 8 assists, pulled a trick fro the Jason Kidd playbook and with a shade under three minutes left backed-up the smaller DJ Augustin in the post and hit a turn-around jumper. On the Net’s next possession, Harris threaded a pretty pass to Kris Humphries (another double-double, 15 points, 14 rebounds) under the rim for an easy two. Then, for the apparent icing on the cake, Harris sank a three-pointer with 1:30 left to put the Nets up by 11. Our Devin wrote a fantastic piece on Harris earlier this week and while I agree that as a player he’s unique enough to not really have a place with this team, if he’s making plays down the stretch like he did last night – and has done against a number of teams this year – Harris will always be welcomed as a fixture on this roster.

As for Lopez, unlike the triple OT game against OKC where he padded his stats just based on sheer minutes being played, last night’s double-double was a well earned. It’s a shame after the guy had more than 30 of these games last season, we have to act around here like it’s a momentous occasion, but let’s just go with it. The smartest thing the Nets did last night was use Lopez to exploit Kwame Brown offensively. Lopez got off to a very fast start, getting 9 of his 14 field goals in the first half and the rebounds didn’t feel accidental. With about three minutes left in the second quarter, Lopez was actually boxed out on the defensive end, but was able to leap above two Bobcat defenders to grab his 6th board. I don’t remember the last time I saw Lopez crash the glass like that and look athletic while doing it. Lopez slowed down a bit on both ends in the second half, but he took a nasty fall in the third quarter and seemingly twisted his knee. I don’t know if it’s to his credit or determent, but he gutted the injury out and still played 41 minutes.

A quick Derrick Favors thought after the jump:

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The Nets (16-37) look for their second win in a row and their first road win in 15 games as they take on the Charlotte Bobcats (22-30) tonight. Here’s a few keys of the game:

The Ugly Has to Stop: The Nets have played the Bobcats twice so far this year (both losses) and both games qualify as some of the worst Nets basketball we’ve seen this year. In the first game, they blew a comfortable 8-point lead with a few minutes left to fall 85-83. The follow-up game, could best be described as one of the ugliest games of the year, a 91-84 loss in OT. I know the Bobcats can play defense, but the Nets need to do much, much better than this offensively. If they did in either game, they’d probably have two wins under their belt because it’s not like the Bobcats have ever looked like the superior team.

Live by the Three, Die by the Three: I think a lot of people were happy to see the Nets hit a season high 12 three-pointers against NOLA on Wednesday, and with the return of Jordan Farmar, complimenting Sasha Vujacic and Anthony Morrow, I understand that. But more than a quarter of the team’s FG attempts (23 of 81) were threes and another 23 FG attempts were classified as long-twos by hoopdata. Compare that with only 13 FG attempts at the rim. Trying to score the bulk of your points on lower percentage jump shots is a recipe for disaster, and the Nets have to do a better job of … and this is like a broken record … get the ball down low to their big men.

And Favors?: Avery Johnson said he was going to play him more minutes going forward. Earlier in the week he said he was going to run more sets for the rookie. Let’s stop talking about this and do it. Favors progression is critical for this team headed into the summer. Otherwise, they’re never going to know what they have besides a trade chip, who is apparently not going to be enough to get them the player they really covet anyway.

Two of the greatest three-point shooters of all time, on the top of two different leaderboards.

Ray Allen hit the 2,561st three-pointer of his career at the 1:48 mark in the first quarter last night, breaking the record held by former Indiana Pacer and currently awkward television analyst Reggie Miller. Miller, who was commentating last night, appeared delighted that such a class act and phenomenal shooter had taken his record. I too couldn’t be happier, and not just for him. It’s because now, we can finally focus on the next great sharpshooter – Nets shooting guard Anthony Morrow.

You see, while Ray Allen sets his record with just one three, Morrow is chasing a record nightly. Morrow rode a 3-5 showing from beyond the arc Wednesday night, increasing his career three-point percentage from .453978 to .455108. This leapfrogs him above Steve Kerr to #1 on the leaderboards of NBA history, who finished his career with a three-point percentage of .454033.

That’s right. While the Celtics now have the most prolific three-point shooter of all time, it’s actually the New Jersey Nets who have the most efficient one.

I get that Anthony Morrow vs. Steve Kerr isn’t as “sexy” a battle as Ray Allen vs. Reggie Miller, but that battle’s over. It’s toast. Not only is it toast, it’s probably toast forever. I would bet a fair amount that Ray will end his career with over 3,000 three-pointers, and no one will approach that number in my lifetime. But a 45% career three-point mark is an unbelievable number, and one that we can only assume gets better as Morrow’s career continues.

In our right sidebar here at NaS, you’ll now see a counter with Morrow’s current career three-point percentage compared to Steve Kerr’s, out to six decimal places. If Morrow’s above it, you’ll see green. If he’s below it, you’ll see red. If he’s somehow equal to it, six decimal points out, I’ll just be shocked. It will also be yellow. Hopefully, we’ll just be swimming in a sea of green for a long time.

The schedule gurus at HoopsWorld look at the remaining games to be played after the All-Star break, and there’s good news for the Nets, who have 25 games remaining on their schedule:

Through 53 games the Nets have only won 16, but things could get a lot better after the break.  Of the Nets 25 post-break games only nine of them are against teams with a record above .500, tied for least in the league.  They are also facing only 12 playoff teams and three of those teams - the 76ers, Pacers and Bobcats - have records under .500.  Throw in the fact their longest road trip is only three games and it’s possible the Nets could win almost as many games after the break as they did before it.

For two years now, the Nets have had a very difficult early schedule. What I’ve found interesting has been the sheer volume of games the Nets have played so far this season. While it’s not extreme, the league average of games left after the break is 26.3, 1.3 games more than what the Nets have.  I think everyone stands to benefit if the Nets don’t have too many Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday weeks ahead of them. It’s just too much basketball.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Devin Harris lately.

A couple of weeks ago, Rob Mahoney wrote a piece for the New York Times that called Devin Harris “invisible,” lauding Harris as a “fantastic” player, but not a dominant one (which is rightfully meant as a compliment). Mahoney continues to assert that he’s having a great year, but is restricted by exterior factors like playing time, being on the Nets, and being nearly 28 years old.

I’d go one step further: There is no other point guard in the NBA like Devin Harris. That’s not meant as an insult, nor is it a compliment. It’s just the truth.

He’s an outcast.

He’s not good enough to be in the elite (Paul, Williams) but not an afterthought (Ridnour, Sessions). He’s too old to be a part of the “young point guard” wave (Rose, Westbrook, Wall, Holiday, Augustin, Jennings, Collison, Lowry, Conley), but hasn’t been in the league long enough to be a true veteran (Nash, Billups, Kidd, Parker, Davis). He relies too much on his speed & quickness to be primarily a half-court distributor (Miller, Bibby, Calderon), but he’s too good of a creator and too poor a shooter to be secretly a combo guard (Curry, Udrih). He’s not playing there to be intentionally unorthodox (McGrady). He’s not a big piece of a great team (Rondo, Nelson, Felton), or a small one (Fisher, Arroyo/Chalmers).

This leaves Harris – a lightning-fast point guard with second-tier skills, essentially in his prime, on a bad team. Not an up-and-comer, but not a grizzled vet. A guy bursting with talent, but at the peak of his trajectory, not scratching the surface of it.

In a weird way, he was (is) ahead of his time – but not in the positive context that we normally use that term. He hit his stride just barely in the wrong era. If Harris were five years younger and putting up these numbers with this style of play, he’d be an untouchable cornerstone of the franchise, just a step below Rose & Westbrook on the “PG of the Future” scale. But instead, the soon-to-be 28-year-old is, outside of rookie Derrick Favors and expiring zombie Troy Murphy, the most tradeable asset the Nets have.

This leaves me with one big, giant, gaping question: How long will Devin Harris be in a Nets uniform? The Nets were certainly ready to say goodbye to him had the ping-pong balls fell their way last May. He’s been consistently mentioned in multiple iterations of the now-defunct Carmelo Anthony deal. The Nets value him, but as an asset as much as a player. The constant rumors have likely been affecting him, as his scoring this season has trended steadily downwards – from 17.5 points per game on 46% shooting in November to just 12.1 and 35% in January, and in February he’s made just thirteen shots in four games. On all too many occasions, he seems disheartened or disinterested. It’s a total code switch from where he started.

I don’t know about you guys, but I remember his first game as a Net, and I was beyond excited for the Devin Harris era. Against Milwaukee in 2008, DH made his first six shots and rode his strong start to twenty-one points, five assists, and one big dunk on Andrew Bogut in just 20 minutes. He also made three-pointers, following it up with four in the next game, and made the post-Kidd era much more palatable.

Three years later, we have a much fuller picture of Harris’ skillset. He’s far from the long-distance marksman I envisioned, instead primarily a slasher who draws contact to get his points. He uses those draw-in skills to find open shooters on the wings or float alley-oops to Brook Lopez. He’s got quick hands and feet and uses them well on the defensive end, although not consistently. Basketball is a game of constant deception, and while he’s not mentioned in that article Harris similarly uses his lateral quickness and fakes to fool defenders. He’s the second-best player on a team that’s 16-37 and heading to the lottery for the fourth straight year. Given his play style, he likely has just two or three more prime years. He, weirdly, has no equal.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that Devin Harris is a bad point guard, or is having a bad year. He’s not. He’s has been distributing as well as ever, and it shows: he’s fourth in the NBA in assist percentage with a career-high 43.5%. His player efficiency rating is the second-highest of his career, behind only his all-star season of 2008-2009. His scoring turns the wheels of victory, averaging 18.5 points in Nets wins and leading the Nets to a 7-3 record when he scores 21 points or more. I mentioned previously that he’s the second-best player on the Nets, but he is the best on many nights (although last night was certainly not one of those times).

It’s that, because of his age, his team, and exterior factors outside of his control, nothing he does anymore leaps off the page. Too young to be a vet, too old to be the future.

He just doesn’t fit in.

Your New Jersey Nets are actually 13-13 at home. That’s pretty good. Well, it’s good when you juxtapose it with the team’s 3-24 record on the road. Wednesday’s game was just more support that the Nets are a competitive basketball team at the Prudential Center.

But the star of this game wasn’t the arena. It wasn’t Brook Lopez, Devin Harris, Avery Johnson, Mikhail Prokhorov, or Carmelo Anthony. The star of Wednesday’s game was none other than the Machine.

Sasha Vujacic.

It was just last Friday that I adored my recap of the Nets-Pistons game with an animated gift of Sasha’s vicious shoulder, and while he will probably never fully redeem himself for every wrong he was responsible for while playing with the Los Angeles Lakers, he’s making a surprisingly capable effort to do so.

Sasha finished the night with a career-high 25 points (basically a quarter of the team’s entire offensive output), 15 of which came on threes dispersed throughout the game that were crucial parts of the Nets’ victory. In fact, without his five points in the overtime period, the Nets probably drop this game.

With Jordan Farmar back in the lineup, it appears that the Nets are always going to have at least one Anthony Morrow show up: Sasha Vujacic or Anthony Morrow. Morrow was decent Wednesday, putting up 15 points on 15 shots, but Vujacic stole the show in the spot-up shooting role. Having two dead-eye shooters on the same roster like that is a very powerful asset to have … when a team is actually competitive. Moving forward, if the Nets decide to re-sign Sasha, which I have mixed feelings about, Sashony Morrowcic could play an important role down the line.

But what about the second star in this game? David West was a horse. That man played all 53 minutes for a team not coached by Don Nelson. What an impressive accomplishment. Not only that: he had the nice cherry on top of 32 points and 15 rebounds. But that’s small potatoes next to all those glorious minutes!

I will say, though, that if your starting lineup includes Aaron Gray, Willie Green, and Sasha Pavlovic — and Chris Paul decided to don his distributor cap that night regardless — David West had better score. And even with his superb effort on offense, the Hornets only mustered 91 points by the end of regulation.

That is especially surprising considering the torrential downpour of threes that Marco Belinelli and the Heartbreakers unleashed on the Nets. They shot 12-of-23 from downtown! It goes to show what a negative effect even associating with Jason Smith can have on a franchise for your team to shoot so well and only pick up 91 points.

Aside from Sasha, no one on the Nets really did anything out of the ord —

OH, WAIT. BROOK LOPEZ HAD SEVEN REBOUNDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, that’s about seven more than anyone expects him to get nowadays, but before we crown him the next Moses Malone, let’s look at the facts here: (1) This was an overtime game, and he still only had seven; (2) He didn’t have a single rebound after the eight-minute mark of the third quarter. So, by all means, resume the joking. He is out of no funk.

But other than that, no Nets really did anything out of the ord —

OH, WAIT. TRAVIS OUTLAW HAD A SOMEWHAT EFFICIENT SHOOTING NIGHT!

No, he didn’t put on his Steve Nash suit and drain crazy off-the-dribble threes, but he did have 11 points on nine shots, including 2-of-3 from beyond the arc. This brings me to a new phenomenon I’ve noticed that I will call the Outlawl Effect: this is the notion that a player’s shot form looks much better when the resulting shot goes in. When it doesn’t, the form looks hideous. Obviously, Outlaw really demonstrates this. In comparison, take someone like Ray Allen, whose form looks beautiful regardless of whether he makes the shot.

But aside from that, there was nothing really out of the ord —

OH, WAIT. DEVIN HARRIS ONLY SCORED TWO POINTS.

Fair enough. That’s kind of normal these days.

But failing all that, this game was pretty stan —

OH, WAIT. JORDAN FARMAR HAD 11 ASSISTS IN HIS FIRST GAME BACK FROM INJURY!

Jordan Farmar’s quality game is attributable to one thing and one thing only. The hair. Over the past couple months, Farmar has slowly but steadily been letting his hair grow out to its UCLA length. Remember how Jordan Farmar was actually good at UCLA? Maybe he has finally figured out that the NBA is all about your do and not at all about your talent. Just ask Robert Swift or Walter Hermann. Wait. What?

To end, here’s my first joke of the recap. The likelihood that Stephen Graham checked into Wednesday’s game during overtime was probably lower than the chance that Jason Kidd checked in.

File this one under obvious, but for Nets fans who are getting discouraged by the latest batch of Carmelo Anthony trade rumors involving Wilson Chandler and the Knicks and Andrew Bynum of the Lakers, Al Iannazzone believes if Denver approaches Billy King, the Nets would still be ineterested in making a trade:

Denver wanted picks, and that’s the interesting part. The Nets own theirs and the Lakers’ first-rounders this year. The Nets also could have Houston’s and Golden State’s No. 1s next year. Denver wanted these picks. The Lakers’, Rockets’ and Warriors’ draft choices are protected, so they can’t trade their picks until their commitments to the Nets are fulfilled.

One would think if the Nuggets came crawling back the Nets wouldn’t offer as much in return and wouldn’t take as many crippling contracts like Rip Hamilton’s, as Al suggests here.

The Nets take on the New Orleans Hornets tonight at 7 PM eastern at home in the Prudential Center. Here are a few keys to the game:

Getting Lucky: The Hornets have been one of the NBA’s most inconstent teams this season. They started out hot, then they slumped, and now they’re getting back to playoff-caliber basketball. For the Nets, it is best for them just to hope that they catch the Hornets on one of their down nights, as the matchup doesn’t look too favorable for New Jersey from a straight-up standpoint.

Brook Lopez’s success: Brook Lopez has looked very good on the offensive end of late, but Emeka Okafor is one of his traditionally tough defensive matchups. With his size and length, he often forces Lopez to areas on the floor from which he can’t get quality looks. It will be fun to see whether Lopez can reconcile his recent offensive boon with Okafor’s staunch defensive efforts tonight.

Devin Harris, the Distributor: Very few people would have ever called Devin Harris a pass-first point guard before this season. Lo and behold, he’s passing more and shooting less. Unfortunately, Harris hasn’t had as much success with the Nets as the last point guard that came to New Jersey and tried that, but it seems like an advancement in his game nonetheless. Let’s see how he stacks up tonight against the league’s best point guard.