For the Nets to snap this recent three game skid, they are going to need to do it with a much more spirited defensive effort. In the Nets last loss, a 105-86 to the Pacers, there was certainly a number of defensive mistakes that the Pacers took advantage of. Let’s take a closer look at some of the different areas in which the Nets had defensive lapses.
Zone Defense
After the Pacers loss, a lot was made of the team’s slow start being the cause of their falling behind early. The Nets opened the game showing Indiana a zone defense. While zones are meant to be every bit as active as man to man, anyone that has ever played basketball before knows, playing a zone defense can sometimes cause a team to take a “break” defensively and this very well could have been a contributing factor to the lethargic start. In the Nets zone, the Pacers did a great job of exposing the most vulnerable part of any zone, the middle, and they did so a lot either by dribble or by pass.
Here, the Nets allow talented Mike Dunleavy Jr. a catch directly in the middle of their zone. Dunleavy gets the attention of four of the Nets defenders, and slips a pass underneath to Roy Hibbert who was sneaking in along the baseline.
Now after Hibbert catches, he attempts a dunk and is contested well by Derrick Favors. What happens after is a problem and part of the slow start Avery Johnson was talking about.
Favors causes Hibbert to miss, but as you can see, circled in red are three of our players are in the paint watching. Neither Devin Harris, Anthony Morrow or Brook Lopez even notice Indiana’s Josh McRoberts, who is in the middle of all them, flying in for the offensive put back dunk. Watching the clip below play in live motion, the lack of a box out is more apparent. In the second clip, you’ll see Ben Uzoh abandon the ball and give Darren Collison an uncontested three pointer.
Poor Rotations
ESPN’s own NBA analyst David Thorpe says that NBA defenses are more about team defense than individual on the ball defenders. His thought is that players in the NBA are just too good to be covered by player, and that ultimately there’s always going to be some sort of help and recover rotation.
For a while now, the NAS team has been clamoring for a little more Derrick Favors. Just inserting him into the starting lineup wasn’t enough. If he’s going to evolve into a legitimate NBA PF, the team is going to have to take some risks and run some plays for him.
One difference Johnson feels he can make now is to get Favors more into the offensive flow.
“I’m going to make a concentrated effort … to run a few more plays for him now,” Johnson said. “No matter what the success rate is, he needs to touch the ball a little bit more.”
The key phrase there is no matter the success rate, because let’s be honest, the Nets have been afraid to take the kid gloves off Favors because they’re still not 100% sure what they got in a player here. I appreciate the desire to win games, but doing in this way has resulted in just 15 wins for the team, so it’s not like they’re going to get much worse giving Favors a few touches instead of maybe watching Travis Outlaw pump fake his way into another 3-10 night.
Brook Lopez is back to business. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
There’s been a lot of talk recently about Brook Lopez on the glass. (Or, I should say, not being on the glass.) It’s valid criticism; Lopez hasn’t had a double-digit rebounding game since the first of December and his total rebound rate has actually dipped below the league average (9.8%, league average is 10%). I haven’t excused that, and still won’t. That being said, his rebounding issues aside, there’s one thing that Brook Lopez is finally starting to do at an elite level:
Score.
In the first half of this season, we were treated to perhaps the worst Brook Lopez we’d seen so far – a 7’2″ behemoth constantly missing midrange jumpers and not crashing the glass. At that point, he was no more effective than a Nick Young or Richard Hamilton. His per-game averages were afloat, but not because of efficient scoring – his field goal percentage had dropped into the low-mid 40′s. For a guy that’s supposed to operate in and around the paint, that’s eerily low. It was approaching Jason Collins territory.
(I will now pause to smash my head into a wall for 20 minutes for comparing Brook Lopez to Jason Collins.)
(……)
(Okay, back.)
In the past month, all of that has changed. In the 15-game span since January 12th, Lopez has been blistering – averaging over 22 points per game while shooting 53.8% from the field and 84.6% from the free throw line, all well above his season averages. To give it some context, the only player in the NBA who’s approaching averaging those percentages for the season is Kevin Garnett, and he only averages 15 points per game. Not bad company.
Not only is Lopez scoring efficiently, he’s also doing so while using a high volume of possessions – in only one game did he take fewer than ten shots (he took 9) and is averaging 16.5 shots per game. We’ve seen back-to-back 30-point games on the road against Portland and Los Angeles (the good one), a three-game stretch in which he took 58 shots and made 35 of them (60.3%), and of course, a game-winner against Cleveland with 1.5 seconds left to top off a 28-point performance.
It’s safe to say that rebounding issues or not, the Brookie Monster is getting back to business putting the ball in the basket.
Once he’s got the ball, Lopez is noticeably more aggressive & quicker on his feet. In the Los Angeles game, he showed off his full array of moves – face-up jumpers, hook shots, spin moves, and dunks. Even against long, strong defenders like Gasol & Bynum (Gasol is underrated as a post defender – he’s 11th in the NBA at defending the roll man and only allows 0.8 points per possession in the post), Lopez was still able to weave his way through the defense and get close, efficient shots.
In this video, you can see some of the things Brook has been working on. The face-up game is there, as is the backdown and hook shot with either hand. He’s attacking the rim with more ferocity than he did in previous months and using his highly advanced footwork and shot fakes to freeze defenders. He’s also using his body – specifically his shoulder – to create space for the ten-foot jumper. My favorite play is the one that starts at 43 seconds; it’s an up-and under that fakes both Gasol and Bynum out of their shoes. It’s absolutely gorgeous.
Brook also has weapons in the pick & roll:
Here, you can see both his ability to maneuver in traffic to lay it in, as well as his ability to spot up. After he sets the screen, the 3’6″ Fisher is forced to switch onto Lopez, and Lopez just shoots over him. Shooting it was the right play – if he tries to start posting up from that far out, the Lakers would have had time to switch back or even double him. When a guy that small is on him, he’s basically uncontested.
Watching the games and analyzing the numbers, there’s a few factors at play here. Firstly, I think it’s safe to say that Lopez has regained most of the strength that he’d lost to summertime mononucleosis. Brook was getting banged around nightly, not looking to get to the rim on most defenders (Hasheem Thabeet excluded, as he is from everything), but recently he’s been able to get much more close to the basket. Even if he posts up far from the block (which he’s still doing occasionally), he’s still able to use his strength & footwork to back his defender down and float that six-to-seven foot jump hook as opposed to an 11-footer. In a game of inches, four feet means the world.
His strength deserves credit, but there’s more to this story. The resurgence of Devin Harris has been huge for Brook. His slashing to the basket has created literally dozens of these opportunities. Harris has exhibited a ton of patience recently; more often than not you can see him letting a play develop instead of forcing passes or wasting chances. In these circumstances, it’s not about allocating individual credit, but how they play in tandem to create scoring opportunities that benefit the team. The synergy is undeniable.
Thirdly, it’s important to note that the Nets just hadn’t been running many sets for Lopez in the first half of the year. It may have been Avery trying to figure out the other weapons on the team, it may have been an attempt to hide his post-mono weakness, it may have been no more than a random statement. Either way, it caused Brook to force bad shots the times he did get the ball. Now that the offense is consistently going through him, he’s able to effectively pick his spots.
But don’t just believe me. The numbers don’t lie. Prior to this stretch, Lopez was shooting just 54.2% at the rim on only 3.8 attempts per game. In the past 15 games? 73.6%, on 4.8 attempts per game. While in the first 37 games Lopez only received assists on at-the-rim shots 52.9% of the time, that figure has jumped to (a coincidental) 73.6% in the past 15 – over a 20% jump in assisted makes. Most of those assists are from Harris.
In the videos, you see the two basic ways the Nets get Brook the ball – a standard pick & roll or letting him fight to get position on the low block. One of my favorite plays the Nets are running for Brook these days is a little more complicated: a double back-pick curl leading into the two-man game. It starts off with Harris bringing the ball up on the left side, then receiving a screen from Lopez on the left wing. Harris shifts to the right, keeping control as Lopez curls around two screens to the block. From there, Lopez either posts up or can set a screen for Harris, playing the two-man game on the right side while the rest of the team spots up on the left.
Here’s the play in FastDraw:
Lopez sets first screen for Harris while team sets up for the next screens.
Humphries/Favors sets second screen for Harris to give him space, while Lopez curls around screens set by the other wings in the game (Morrow/Graham/Farmar/Outlaw) and cuts to the left block.
From here, Harris can either feed Lopez in the post (x1), or if he doesn't have position, Lopez can run a pick & roll with Harris (x2). Humphries slides down to the opposite block and the wings space out for spot-up threes (Graham only goes out to 20).
The Nets ran this play at least four times against the Cavaliers in their 103-101 victory, and you can see the results for yourself:
When watching these four possessions, really look at how Lopez instantly fights for position once he finds the block. Even if the double back pick isn’t effective, he’s still able to lose his man and create opportunities with the movement. The amount of options out of this play is what makes it great: Lopez can dominate a smaller defender, Harris can look to create off the dribble in tandem with a Lopez screen, and if the help defense overplays the post Morrow spotting up in the right corner is as good as gold.
Brook Lopez isn’t rebounding. There’s no question. He may never become a great rebounder, or even a good one. But what he’s becoming right now is a great, efficient scorer, and there’s a lot of value in that. You can count the great offensive big men in the league right now on one hand. In December, I would’ve left Lopez off that hand. Now? He’s back on the list.
And the best part? He’s only 22. There’s a lot of room left to grow.
So after going on a nice little run in mid-January, the Nets are struggling again, starting off games poorly, coming out of halftime poorly, just playing poorly in general.
“Everybody’s got to come out with the same mentality (of) ‘We’re not going to get off to a slow start,’’’ Morrow said. “Whether it’s talking, whether it’s — anything — not letting them get any fast breaks, a hard foul, whatever it is, we’ve got to make sure as a team, we do something. It can’t be one or two people. It’s got to be five guys up here, and then the second group comes in with the same intensity.’’
Colin Stephenson reports that a tweak to the starting lineup may be coming up for Wednesday’s game against NOLA:
Johnson hinted Sunday he may tweak his starting lineup to try to get the team off to faster starts. He already made one change Friday, when he re-inserted Morrow to the lineup after bringing him off the bench for his first eight games back from a 17-game absence due to a strained hamstring.
Sunday, Johnson said the team played better in the third quarter after Quinton Ross came into the game in that quarter. That could mean the 6-6 Ross (averaging 1.4 points in 9:28 per game) might step in for 6-9 Travis Outlaw (9.8 ppg, 4.4 rpg, .383 field goal shooting) in the starting five.
I don’t know how much Ross will help, but Avery seems to recognize that Travis Outlaw can’t drag down the starting line-up every night (leave him to drag down the bench).
Last Friday the Nets went to Indiana and got handily beaten by the Pacers, giving up 124 points in the process. So it would be logical to think that the team would be looking for a little bit of revenge, especially at home yesterday afternoon. But what happened instead? The Pacers got out to an early lead, were up double digits at halftime and the Nets got blown out of the building again, but this time in front of their home fans. It was another disheartening performance where the Nets didn’t show much fight (other than a 2-minute stretch in the third quarter). The inconsistency from this team has become so rampant that it’s just time to call them what they are: a bad NBA basketball team.
Before the game I talked about needing to see some consistency from the starters. And there was some consistency yesterday, in that they were all consistently bad. Nobody in the starting lineup shot over 50 percent, and Brook Lopez and Devin Harris combined to shoot just 9-26 from the field. The Nets struggled as a whole shooting the ball against Indiana, especially from downtown and the foul line. They made 4 of 16 three’s and shot 57.1 percent from the charity stripe. That’s not going to get it done.
What is there to say about the first half? The Nets came out and showed no defensive intensity, gave up 33 in the 1st quarter and then their offense faltered late in the 2nd. Paul George got whatever he wanted and the Nets were especially bad in transition. George got out on the run for numerous dunks and was able to crash the offensive boards effectively as well. After shooting about 50 percent midway through the half, the team ended shooting just 43.8 percent from the field. And there was one major factor that is was an awful sign from the first half. The team’s leading scorer was Johan Petro. I don’t need to say anything else.
As it’s become clear this team isn’t going anywhere, the one thing I’d like to see is some development from the young guys (cough, cough Derrick Favors). Well the rook has continued his inconsistency and he might as well have not even been out there yesterday. He had just 2 points and 3 boards and had his most successful stat in the personal fouls column, where he had four. If I were Avery Johnson I’d start playing him upwards of 25 minutes per game. If he’s going to make mistakes, why not let it be now when the season is basically over already?
Throughout the game one of the key issues for the Nets was controlling the defensive glass, and assistant coach Sam Mitchell spoke to that going into the locker room at halftime. The team had trouble rebounding out of the zone all day and it was a major factor on defense. But it’s hard to get on Avery for this one, because frankly against an athletic team like the Pacers, I don’t know if the Nets can play man effectively. Before the season we all talked about the team needing one of their swingmen to step up, both on offense and defense. Well that hasn’t happened, and that’s why opposing stars have their way with the Nets.
After trailing by 13 at halftime, the Pacers quickly got out to a 17-point lead in the third. But then I saw easily the most positive thing to take away from this game, and that was the effort of Devin Harris. For a two-three minute stretch in the 3rd, the Nets floor general forced the issue on offense, got some steals on defense and was able to almost singlehandedly cut the lead to 9. But he couldn’t do it alone, and the lead was back up to 14 for Indiana at the end of the third.
Bad teams seem to have an uncanny ability to make ordinary players look extraordinary and the Nets certainly accomplished that today with Paul George and Dahntay Jones. While George is still young and could develop into a very good player, Jones is a journeyman that has been known as a defensive specialist. Yesterday the two combined for 32 points and showed constant energy on the floor.
The one thing I will give Avery Johnson credit for with this team is his ability to keep them together and make them a cohesive unit. Anyone can easily see this team likes playing with each other. The biggest example of that from yesterday was at the end of the third quarter, when the Nets were able to block a shot to keep the lead at 14. The entire bench was up and supporting the guys on the floor. I realize this is a small thing and in the end wins are all that matter in professional sports, but there are plenty of teams that would have checked out by this time in the season.
It was yet another brutal game to watch for Nets fans and the team is now 15-37 with just 30 games remaining. They have some talent but have no consistency whatsoever, and have proven to be a very poor team through their first 52 games. Next up is the Hornets on Wednesday night, who are 12 games over .500 and have one of the best players in the NBA in CP3.
CBS’ Ken Berger has a pretty extensive piece up about the state of the Orlando Magic and their franchise center Dwight Howard, who is expected to become a free agent by 2012. With the Magic seemingly unable to get over that hump the past few years, and some recent trades not helping things along, there’s talk that Howard could split town. But where will he go? Berger gives the Nets a shot to play with the big boys here:
To paraphrase LeBron, what should he do? If he does leave, Howard has his eyes on two teams — the Lakers and Knicks — as the big-market destinations where he’ll chase down his championships and marketing opportunities if things don’t work out in the Sunshine State. The Nets, who are supposed to be in Brooklyn by then, also are in the mix, the person said.
Obviously, so much can change in a season and a half, but the fact that the Nets should be in Brooklyn by then only helps things. I don’t think anyone reading this would argue against Howard coming here if he could be convinced, though, maybe I’m wrong about that.
Nets Post-Up is a stream of consciousness post without editing. Luckily, the author can filter profanity, possesses excellent grammar, and isn’t lazy about spelling. Basically, he’s amazing.
While writing my latest fantasy basketball column for The Basketball Jones (PLUG!), I mention that Devin Harris’ assists production has been fairly prodigious (12.5 over four games for the past week at the time; only Steve Nash averaged more assists in that span at 12.7 per) lately and it had me wondering about why some Nets fans want him traded. Also, after Troy Murphy, Harris is second in line in regards to trade rumors nowadays. Has he really been that bad? Or is it because Harris has value right now and it’s best to cash out on him? Here’s a breakdown by month (October 2010-January 2011) in wins and losses and how Harris has done. Read more…
The last time the Nets played the Pacers it was one of the uglier games all season. After a strong home stand the Nets went to Indiana and got run out of the building. They didn’t compete particularly hard in that game and since then they’ve lost 3 of 4, with the only win coming in an inspired effort against Carmelo Anthony and the Nuggets. Since that game Monday night, the team has lost convincingly to the Sixers and Pistons, two teams that are frankly not very good.
Here are some things to keep an eye on for this Super Bowl Day matinee at The Rock:
Slowing Down Indiana. Since the Pacers fired Jim O’Brien they’ve won three in a row and have been playing very well on the offensive end. Indiana is averaging 107 points per game in their last three and trying to slow them down will be critical for the Nets this afternoon. 9 days ago the Pacers dropped 124 on the Nets and made it look easy. Some defensive integrity from the team, especially at home, would be nice to see.
Consistency from the Starters. The Nets have none. One game Devin Harris makes 5 of 8 shots and scores 16 points and the next he only takes 6 shots and scores 9 points. The same inconsistency can be said for every Nets starter and they have all been very erratic all season. I do like that Avery Johnson has re-inserted Anthony Morrow into the starting lineup, and he was one guy that had a strong game in Detroit the other night. But it needs to continue today against Indiana.
Hump and The Machine. Kris Humphries and Sasha Vujacic have easily been the Nets two top bench performers and it’s hard to argue with their production over the past month. Because of the inconsistency of the starting 5, the Nets need big-time bench points in order to win. Friday against the Pistons these two struggled, as they combined for 13 points on just 5 of 17 shooting. They have been pretty good at home all season, so I’m looking for a bounce back game from them against the Pacers.
