Nets Are Scorching

This piece is co-written with J.M. Poulard of TrueHoop Network sister site WarriorsWorld. What started as a friendly exchange of e-mails and thoughts on media coverage developed into… well, whatever this is.

For the past three or four years, the Kobe-LeBron debate has been at the forefront of NBA discussions as players, coaches, experts, fans and media members have all shared their opinions on which player they thought was better. James has owned Bryant in their head-to-head regular season match-ups, whereas the Black Mamba has won the proverbial games that matter, helping the Los Angeles Lakers earn the last two NBA titles. These players have never once competed against each other in the playoffs and yet will be linked with one another for the rest of their careers.

Tupac Shakur’s Hit ‘Em Up will always be mentioned with Biggie’s Who Shot Ya, much like Jay-Z’s Takeover will always be in the same conversation as Nas’s Ether. We might just have a new addition to the list that involves how we perceive and remember LeBron James and Kobe Bryant: The Decision…

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Omer Asik Night at The Rock.

Box Score – By The Horns – BlogABull

Well, let’s get it out of the way right now: it wasn’t pretty, and the Nets lost.

Cool.

Now that that’s taken care of, let’s remind ourselves that the Nets hung with Chicago – the team with the best record in the Eastern Conference – for 45 minutes, despite a 1-12 shooting night from Deron Williams. Let’s keep in mind that Brook Lopez dropped an efficient 22 points & eight boards, and Kris Humphries had another “man, this guy is ridiculous” night with 16 rebounds and five blocks (most of the huge variety).

Let’s remember that the Nets held the Chicago Bulls – who are 49-18 and hold the best record in the East – to 40.7 shooting, including 4-20 from beyond the arc. That the top two offensive options on Chicago combined for just 40 points on 40 shots, and that the Nets defense for the most part did its job this evening – although there are certainly questions when late in a close game all five defenders are on one side of the floor and Kyle Korver is spotting up from three on the opposite wing to give the Bulls an eight-point lead with 75 seconds left.

(Was that a run-on sentence? Maybe. But if the Nets run on the Bulls as much as I make run-on sentences and hacky puns, we might be writing a different recap tonight.)

I’m not saying the Nets played a great game – they didn’t. Not even a little bit. When a team shoots 3-19 from deep (and just 1-17 after Morrow’s first two connects early in the first), when that team allows Omer Asik to grab sixteen rebounds (nine offensive) in 25 minutes, when that team gets a combined 1-21 shooting night from its point guards, well, that team is bound to lose. But for that first 45 minutes, the Nets essentially played toe-to-toe with an NBA Finals contender, and that’s with their star player missing 11 of 12 shots. They played a bad game and still had a great chance against a top-5 team in the NBA. That’s progress.

It’s almost paradoxical that a game prominently featuring two of the most innovate point guards in the league today was defined by such ugliness on both sides. Rose & Williams combined to shoot just 9-35 from the floor, and if you include backups, all the point guards for both teams combined to shoot just 10-48. Yes, that number actually gets uglier the more you look at it. Both stars shot poorly for different reasons; for Williams, it was a matter of his hand injury, while Rose struggled to get in rhythm with his jumper.

Rose also had at least four moments on offense that served as nice “oh yeah, that’s why people think he should be MVP” reminders, but he also had a pretty poor overall game. Rose is approaching Kobe Bryant territory in this sense; Kobe could go 7-25 and all I’ll remember is how pretty those seven shots looked. Similarly, Rose went 8-23 and all I remember is that ferocious dunk, those two gorgeous floaters in the lane, and that coast-to-coast layup right after Kris Humphries tied the game at 67.

As an aside, it’s interesting how two guys who are legitimate stars at their position have significantly different roles – Rose is expected to anchor Chicago’s offense, while Deron is a cog in creating everyone else’s offense. Rose is expected to carry that huge offensive burden, and when his jumper’s not falling, it can cause a lot of problems for Chicago. That was evident in this game.

All in all, the streak was fun while it lasted, but really, all good things must come to an end. I didn’t think they’d come out with a victory, but the fact that they were in the game that late – especially despite the poor shooting night – is a very good sign. I still don’t think they make the playoffs in this season, but I also think there’s little doubt that this team is a playoff contender next year – and if Billy King & Mikhail Prokhorov make do on their promise to surround Deron with at least one more superstar, there’s a serious contender in the mix here.

More thoughts after the jump.
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Want to watch March Madness tonight, but worried that you may miss the story from the Nets game tonight? Have no fear, Nets are Scorching is here! Tonight, Derrick Rose & the rest of the Chicago Bulls come to town to take on Deron Williams & the rest of the New Jersey Nets. Damion James, who’s been out with concussion symptoms, should be in uniform tonight, although it’s unclear how much he’ll play. The Bulls are expected to be without Carlos Boozer (left ankle), but Joakim Noah (flu-like symptoms) should be available. The Nets are now 16-16 at home with this five-game winning streak, while the Bulls are 18-14 on the road. Now, the Bulls are a great team – arguably the best in the East – and I’m not expecting a victory. If the Nets do win, though…

This should be a pretty exciting game to watch for obvious reasons, including the first of our keys to the game:

D-Will and D-Rose square off. This is a “duh.” Arguably the two best point guards in the NBA, the 22-year-old Rose has become the media darling in the MVP race, leading the Bulls to a 48-18 record with averages of 25 points and 8 assists per game. Deron, on the other hand, has energized a dormant franchise, averaging 16 points and 14 assists in his short time in New Jersey. These two will be going at it all game long – and it’ll be a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Attack the (few and far between) weak spots on defense. Although the narrative is that Rose has carried a great team offensively (and that’s partially true), Chicago is really this good because of their defense. By any metric – defensive rating on Basketball-Reference, defensive rating on HoopData, Points Per Possession on Synergy – Chicago is the unquestioned best defensive team in the NBA. According to Synergy, they’re #1 in isolation, #2 at defending the pick & roll ballhandler, #2 at defending the roll man, #2 at defending spot-ups, #3 at defending cuts, #4 at defending off-ball screens, and #5 at defending offensive rebounds. Needless to say, they’re pretty good. However, they’ve proven to be weak in two areas: defending the transition game (#18 in the NBA), and defending handoffs (#21). If the Nets can get out and run, and wreak havoc with the handoff play (one of David Thorpe’s favorites), they should be able to maximize their offensive output.

Force the Bulls to go to their bigs. The Bulls, unsurprisingly, are strong offensively in areas that require shot creation on the wings – in isolation and pick & roll ballhandling. However, their weakest offensive areas are the opposite – the roll man in the pick & roll, post-ups, and spot-ups. With Carlos Boozer out, those first two get even worse. If the Nets can cut off Derrick Rose on the pick-and-roll and force Luol Deng into limiting his shots, they’ve got a real shot at extending this winning streak to six.

For more news & analysis on the Chicago Bulls, check out TrueHoop sister site By The Horns.

We’ve seen it all and more from Kris Humphries at this point. Big slam dunks. Huge chasedown blocks. The hustle that Humphries brings to this team is underappreciated nightly by most folks who doesn’t respect that New Jersey uniform. When asked about him, the most common response is “oh, he’s that guy that dates Kim, right?”

He is. But he’s been so much more. After last Friday night’s career game – 19 points, no missed shots, and a career-high 20 rebounds – it marked the second time that the Hump had outplayed his Clippers counterpart, superstar and known car-jumper Blake Griffin. Back in November, the Hump held Griffin to just 11 points and just and three rebounds (none on the defensive end) in 30 foul-plagued minutes. It was, according to Basketball-Reference, Blake’s lowest “game score” of the season.

Until that Clippers game, my general view of Humphries was that he wasn’t a particularly good defender – he doesn’t rotate well and isn’t quick enough to defend most power forwards. However, after seeing him play yet another great game against a guy that most players seem to be deathly afraid of, I decided to look a little deeper into the numbers, because, after all, I’m an idiot.

Sure enough, I found that the Hump is actually a much better defender than I’d expected.

Other than just the wildly powerful blocks – and there have been dozens of those, with victims ranging from LaMarcus Aldridge to Eric Maynor to Lou Amundson to Robin Lopez – I wanted to know how he actually performed against other power forwards. Sure enough, a look at 82games.com bore out the idea that Humphries is actually a very solid defender. Hump’s PER at the power forward position is a very good 18.6, averaging 16.7 points and 17.7 rebounds per 48 minutes on 52% shooting. Opponents at the 4 average more points per 48 (19.1), but on worse shooting (48.2%) and don’t rebound the ball nearly as much (10.7). This adds up to a player efficiency rating of a below average 14.6 for his opponents. That’s a four-point PER advantage for Humphries.

The other metrics seem to bear this out. Humphries has seen the majority of his defense in the post, and while he’s not a top-tier defender, he’s certainly been impressive. According to Synergy Sports Technology, in 113 post defense possessions Humphries has allowed just 0.81 points per possession, holding opponents to just 42% shooting and forcing 11 turnovers. Over the course of the season, Humphries has shown that he’s capable of using his wide upper body to defend backdowns, as well as his surprisingly agile feet to cut off quick moves. He’s not great by any measure, but he’s pretty good – definitely better than I’d expected.

But the numbers that really surprised me were the ones in isolation.

Humphries has utterly shut down opponents in isolation sets this season. He’s shut down players in isolation at every position – literally, he’s been switched onto little guys like Steve Nash & Jose Calderon, to wings like Carmelo Anthony and Tayshaun Prince, to bigs like Carlos Boozer, Dirk Nowitzki, & David West, and he’s stopped all of them.

(Yes, Blake Griffin too.)

Perhaps opponents think they can score on him in isolation, but he’s got quicker hands and feet than nearly everyone expects, and most guys just end up throwing up bad shots when they’re unable to create good looks.

The numbers don’t lie: in iso, Humphries is allowing just 19-71 shooting (26.8%) and has forced eight turnovers. That adds up to just 0.6 points per possession. That’s, obviously, one of the best marks in the NBA.

It’s certainly strange that a guy who’s so well known for dating a superstar outside of basketball can play like the polar opposite – the dude just busts his butt constantly on both sides of the floor. While that adds up to an efficient – albeit low-usage – player on the offensive side, it’s weirdly the defense that he’s shown that he can stick with some of the best players in the NBA. I still have questions about his rotations – the Nets aren’t a great defensive team, and he’s got a lion’s share of that responsibility – but there’s no question that the guy has ramped it up on the defensive side of the floor.

I love e-mail, especially when it’s a link to a fun little video celebrating the last five games of Nets WINNING (TM Charlie Sheen).  Enjoy!

In what can easily be called the Nets best win this season and it came during the best stretch of basketball the Nets have enjoyed in two years, but it wasn’t easy. Late in the Nets’ 88-79 victory over the Eastern Conference leading Boston Celtics, the Nets were clinging to a two-point lead, but used some excellent execution to get some breathing room.

Let’s take a closer look.

Probably one of the most skilled pick and roll players in the game today, the Nets wisely opt to put star point guard Deron Williams in another such situation. It wasn’t just your classic 1-5 or 1-4 high ball screen, instead, the Nets used lots of motion and had plenty of options out of this set.

As you see here, the play is beginning with Deron Williams setting a cross screen for Brook Lopez. After screening, Deron Williams cuts to the top of the key and runs of a Kris Humphries screen. As you can see Humphries waiting to screen at the top of the key.

This screening the screener action is used quite regularly in set basketball plays.

After Williams comes off the Humphries screen and receives the ball, Hump immediately turns around and sets a ball screen for Williams. As you can see at the bottom of the screen, Brook Lopez’s defender, Glen Davis, has his head turned and loses sights of Brook. Lopez takes advantage of this, and cuts behind him, beating him to a spot directly under the rim.

Brook does a great job sealing off Davis in the paint. There is a great window for Williams to pass into, and Williams, the master creator does so, executing a picture perfect one-handed bounce pass. His pass was perfectly timed, and perfectly placed, leading Brook right into his jump hook shot.

A thing of beauty and an encouraging sign of chemistry between two of our cornerstones.

Watch it all unfold live:

Five in a row with the #1 ranked (in the East) Chicago Bulls next on the docket. Though, remember, the Nets beat the Bulls earlier this year well before Deron Williams was a twinkle in their eyes.

Al Iannazzone is talking confidence with Nets players, and he says they’re all acting and talking differently compared to a few weeks ago:

Earlier this season, after a good win or a good performance, some Nets talked about having a swagger and making a playoff run, but then would be crushed the next game or play with no energy. Reality slapped them hard in the face. Now, the Nets are talking and playing the part, starting with Lopez, but everyone is contributing in a major way, and they have to be taken seriously.

This is a huge stretch for the Nets coming up. How they do here will determine whether they have a real shot at the postseason. Of course, they need help from other teams, and the Knicks did themselves or the Nets no favors by dropping the last two games to the Pacers. The Nets sit six games out with 17 to play.

I love it. The postseason may be a long shot, but the Nets have forced themselves into the conversation because they got a favorable stretch of the schedule coming up and the teams in front of NJ, save for when they’re playing the allegedly “contending” Knicks, have some tough ones coming up.  John Hollinger on Twitter yesterday predicted 13-4 should get the Nets close. Sure, why not?

Carry on.