After a career resurgence in the 2010-11 season with the soon-to-be-cross-bridge-rival New York Knicks, Shawne Williams has lost his way. A 40% marksman from beyond the arc just a season ago, Extra E has turned in a 25.8% clunkfest in 19 games in New Jersey — and that’s including his half-court heave against Philadelphia.
What’s happened to him? Let’s break it down. Read more…
Deron Williams is in the middle of what one might call an up-and-down season. Thus far it seems that for every excellent game D-Will plays — like, say, a 34-point explosion against the best defense in the NBA to upset them in overtime — he throws up an equally gut-wrenching performance.
Click the jump for some charts on how erratic Williams’ play has been this season, and just how much the Nets rely on him to win basketball games.
When the Nets run through their progressions, things go well. When they don’t, they take a turn for the worse.
Here’s one example of running through their progressions:
This play, off an offensive rebound by Humphries, starts with MarShon Brooks at the top of the key, thumbing down to Jordan Farmar. This sends Farmar on a curl to set a screen for Anthony Morrow:
It isn’t a particularly strong screen, but it sends Gary Forbes slightly off course, forcing Johan Petro’s defender Linas Kleiza to show above Petro:
As soon as Kleiza shows, Petro immediately cuts to the basket, and Brooks fakes a look to Morrow and finds Petro for the easy dunk. Brooks’ fake to Morrow and immediate fire to Petro at the basket makes me think that the play was designed for Petro to score, or at least for Brooks and Petro to read if Petro’s defender tries to cut off Morrow’s lane to the three-point line.
Anti-plays
This was one of the few plays that “worked” offensively last night for New Jersey, mostly because the rest of their plays didn’t go anywhere or didn’t have multiple reads. So much of the offense these days seems centered around “pick-and-roll, hope the defense screws up, throw out for spot-up shooters, rinse, lather, repeat.” That’s a potentially effective offense, but when it’s the playbook’s majority, it’s relatively stoppable.
The Nets couldn’t get much working off pick-and-roll action, as their spot-up shooters often came up off-balance around curls or rushing shots late in the shot clock. When the pick-and-roll broke down and no shooters were found, the Nets resorted to isolations, which just isn’t an effective way to score.
Turnovers
By my count, 11 of the Nets’ 15 turnovers were unforced errors; balls lost out of bounds, traveling calls, offensive fouls where the defense wasn’t set up for a charge, passes to no man’s land, dribbles gone awry, et al. The Raptors are the second-worst team in the league at causing turnovers, but all they needed to do tonight was react when the Nets gave it away.
Real Estate
The long two-pointer is the least efficient shot in the game: it’s the easiest to find, but both rarely draws fouls and offers you the same amount of points that a shot near the rim allows. When a team can’t find shots at the rim, there’s nowhere to go but out. The Raptors got shots both inside and outside, while the Nets couldn’t shoot from anywhere.
On the inside, the Nets scored just two dunks (both from Johan Petro off assists from MarShon Brooks), and shot an abysmal 6-15 on layups. Outside, as mentioned, the Nets rarely shot in balance or with space, while the Raptors got consistent clean looks from midrange due to botched rotations and poor defensive planning. DeMar DeRozan isn’t the most effective shooter, but shooting becomes target practice when there’s either no defense or a defender three inches your junior in your vicinity.
TVD
Tunnel vision defense is basketball rabies. It’s an uncontrollable impulse, one that spreads through a defense, by way of non-communication and over-excitedness, much like a virus through the bloodstream; once one player’s found his way out of position, another must rotate to guard two players, then another player must help him out, and before anyone knows what happened, five players are out of balance as one with an opposing jersey puts an orange sphere through a red cylinder.
The Nets are full of antsiness. Sundiata Gaines sees a strip possibility and just can’t avoid trying to make something happen, even if that means leaving his man for an open 3. Shelden Williams knows the Nets are in a zone and he rushes to his spot, even if that abandons the entire left side. Johan Petro hedges too high on a screen, ignorant that only shooting guard MarShon Brooks can rotate to cover power forward Ed Davis. Shawne Williams knows that Amir Johnson is Kris Humphries’ man, and leaves him when his assignment crosses the plane, even though Humphries is nowhere close to Johnson and he gets a completely uncontested dunk.
The Nets have shown signs of avoiding TVD in scattered moments throughout the season, and sometimes put it together or ride Deron Williams for just long enough to eke out a victory. But the Nets are still lost defensively more often than not, and it appears systemic rather than individual.
As soon as I read that tweet, I immediately disagreed with D-Will’s intentions, as I’ve figured the pass-first-shoot-second Williams was a much more effective basketball player. So, I took some action in figuring out if this was actually true.
This season, the Nets are 4-0 in games where D-Will scores at least 24 points. In three of those wins (PHO, PHI, TOR), Deron took at least 18 shots and shot an average of 48% from the field. The Nets also won the season opener in Washington where D-Will shot 8-for-22 with 23 points. As for the big picture, 5 of the Nets 6 wins have come when Deron leads the team in shot attempts and in points.
Just the opposite is true for the teams record when Deron doesn’t lead the team in shot attempts for the game (1-5) or in points (1-8). As good as a distributer as Deron is, the Nets wins have all come when he is shooting the ball often. The Nets are 1-2 in games where D-Will has at least 13 assists versus last season when the Nets/Jazz were a combined 8-4.
Okay, so the assist stat is skewed because D-Will has been shooting the ball more this year (16.4 shot attempts per game), than last (14.4 Nets/Jazz combined) and because we are still early into the season. But another key factor has been the surrounding talent around him. The past two seasons, D-Will averaged 10.3 assists, 2 more than he has had this season. In Utah and with a Brook Lopez-fronted Nets team, D-Will had better players who were able score off his looks. This year is a different story, and his assist numbers have dropped. It’s also worth noting that this years Nets have shot 42% from the field, while Deron’s last three Jazz teams (’10-’11, ’09-’10 and ’08-’09) shot 47%, 49% and 48% respectively.
Bottom line: because of the difficulty to create shots for a poor shooting Nets team, Deron’s assists go unrecorded. Until the Nets get Brook Lopez back, it’s probably best for the Nets offense and Deron Williams’ play to take more shots and distribute less. Thank you for reading the most math I have done since high school. I stand corrected.
The three-pointer has been an obvious weapon for the Nets this year, either by design or by necessity. They have made 35 three’s in their past two games and now lead the NBA with 115 total.
So it should come as no surprise that with the game nearing an end and the Nets holding a lead, the three-pointer was what sealed the deal.
Let’s break it down.
Inbounding from the baseline, the Nets held a five point lead, with a fresh 24 second shot clock and only 1:11 remaining in the game. A perfect possession for the Nets in this situation would be to run the shot clock all the way down and get a score. Here’s what happened.
After some initial action off the inbounds, the Nets get the ball into the hands of Deron Williams and set themselves up. The Nets on this trip are not so much running a “set play”, but more putting players in a position where they can succeed and make a play.
The Nets isolate Deron on the right side of the floor with shooters (from right to left: MarShon Brooks, Mehmet Okur and Anthony Morrow) spacing the floor on the left and Kris Humphries flattened out on the left side baseline.
Avery Johnson is basically giving Williams the freedom to make a play here. He has the entire right side of the floor to work with, but a drive to the left and towards the middle of the deck will cause help from the Suns defenders. This is exactly what Deron does.
After driving right and crossing over to his left, Williams gets himself into the paint and the teeth of Phoenix’s defense. Deron at this point is just playing simple basketball. Three-pointers are good, but they get even better when your able to get the ball inside first. Deron’s penetration allows all three Nets shooters to have their feet and chests squared to the hoop.
Deron must just draw a second defender and read who is open as a result of the help defense. In the photo above, you can see Marcin Gortat stepping up, already helping on Williams’ drive. As a result, Jared Dudley (who was guarding Morrow) is forced to come inside and help on Humphries.
All that’s left for Deron to do is make the simple read of seeing where the help is coming from, seeing who is open and delivering the ball. He fires over a pass to Morrow, basically right to his hands which allows Morrow to catch and shoot quickly before the recovering Dudley can get there.
As I said earlier a perfect possession would be the Nets running the clock down and scoring points and as you can see, the shot clock at the time of Morrow’s release is at five.
When we discuss tunnel vision in basketball, we generally refer to the idea of a singular player that takes the challenge of deconstructing the opposing defense single-handedly upon himself. Images of Nick Young, Jamal Crawford, Brandon Bass, and other point-focused, ball-domineering players flash across our consciousness. There’s often little more than the ball, the first line of defense, and the basket in their frame of vision.
What we don’t often talk about, and can often be as damaging, is this particular propensity to over-focus while playing on the opposite side of the ball. Not tunnel vision offense, but tunnel vision defense (TVD). As I’ve mentioned before, I like calling it TVD because TVD makes it sound more like a disease, which it is; complete with symptoms (slow rotations, poor communication, staring down the ballhandler or secondary offensive option) and damaging effects (points on points on points).
Currently, the Nets allow their competitors 112.2 points per 100 possessions, the worst in the NBA. They’re almost four points worse than their nearest “competitor” (Sacramento) and ten points below the current league average of 102.4. (It should be noted that the league average is normally higher, but the shortened and rushed season has taken its toll on efficiency.)
TVD is the biggest reason the Nets are scraping the barrel bottom of history. Some examples of its manifestations, in the biggest problem area, after the jump.
Arnovitz theorizes that NBA offenses that limit turnovers and protect the ball effectively “showing up” for possessions and get an attempt at the rim are among the most efficient offenses in the NBA.
He spotlights the Chris Paul led Clippers and the Hawks of recent years as teams that run simplistic offenses, yet, by nature of their simplicity are protecting the ball and therefore getting attempts at the rim resulting in more efficient offenses. And while you could make the argument that even as simple as a ball-screen may be, when the handler is Chris Paul and the screener is Blake Griffin, the simple-ness of that play instantly turns complex when you factor Paul’s wizardry with the ball and Griffin’s shear ferocity with which he rolls to the rim, Arnovitz’s underlying point of – keep the ball, get shots, have a better offense – holds true.
Taking a look at the Nets, you can see how a simple case of limiting their turnovers and thus getting more attempts at the rim could help their offense.
The Nets currently rank 27th (of 30) in offensive efficiency (which measures points scored per 100 possessions). The only teams with worse offensive futility are the Wizards and the Detroit Pistons. There are many factors that have gone into this number: injuries, new players working under a new coach with limited practice time and cold-shooting are among the biggest. However, examining the Nets with the Arnovitz theory of ball-protection and you will see the Nets can improve in another, highly controllable area – turnovers.
The Nets haven’t been showing up for possessions and in fact they are among the most the NBA’s leaders in turnover rate (percentage of possessions that end in a turnover) at 15.12. Their biggest culprit? Our maestro and ball-dominator, Deron Williams who is leading the Nets and the entire NBA at 4.6 turnovers per game.
A lot of Deron’s turnovers can be due to the fact that he is being asked to burden such a large offensive role for the Nets. He is the best player on our team at creating a shot for himself while also doubling as the only player who can consistently create shots for his teammates. We need Deron to constantly be in attack mode, to constantly be probing opposing defenses because we’ve seen the results without him on the floor. Deron needs to take risks for the Nets to succeed, but it is coming at a cost and that cost is his turnover numbers.
And while I’m certainly not suggesting even in the slightest that Deron needs to have the ball less or should not be pressing as much, but even Williams would admit he’s not playing his best hoops of his career.
Moving forward, it will be interesting to see how the Nets offense evolves. Although lately the offense has clicked a little better, it still is not performing well. As we’ve stated earlier, aside from the low efficiency numbers, the Nets are 28th in points per game (87.0 ppg) and 25th in assists per game (17.8 apg).
When asked about the Nets offense, Avery Johnson stated:
We are a penetration team now, because we have limited post-up game. So when we penetrate and guys are open, we just have to do a better job of knocking down our shots. Our paint attack is not so much from post-ups but from penetration and because of that penetration, we’re going to get open shots. We just have to take them and make them.
- Avery Johnson
In the early going you can certainly see reflections of what Avery is talking about. Deron Williams has been getting himself into the paint at will and the shooters the Nets have acquired this off-season along with mainstay Anthony Morrow have spaced the perimeter. The Nets are attempting three-pointers at a rate of 31.0 per 100 possessions, a rate which is second only to the Knicks.
The shots just haven’t been going down, yet. As a team the Nets are making just 31.2% of those attempts.
But signs of that trend changing have appeared. Against Atlanta, the Nets scored a season-high 101 points and connected on half of their three-pointers. A welcome sign to say the least.
So the Nets formula for good offense is simple. “Show up” for possessions by limiting turnovers, keep the ball in Deron’s hands and allow him to do what he does best, create off penetration and feed shooters who need to make shots.
In what has been a vast array of darkness surrounding this Nets season thus far, there has been one, shining, flickering beacon of hope and that is rookie MarShon Brooks. The mere sight of his Marshon rising from the bench and walking to the scorer’s table elicits eruptions from the Nets crowd.
Sure, some of his approval stems from the fact that the Nets (as currently constructed) don’t have lots of potential laden players. Young prospects that carry with them hope for something greater down the line, all-star game appearances perhaps, but to his credit, Marshon in the early going has proven he certainly has the chops to score points in the NBA.
But to breakdown his game fairly, we need to not look just at his point totals, but look deeper at his overall play and most importantly how he can improve. As stated earlier, the book on MarShon coming out of college was that he can score and to no one’s surprise that has proven to be true. And while scoring is certainly valuable, for Marshon to become more of a complete offensive player, I believe he needs to add more to his game.
He’s been one dimensional on offense in the early going, almost to a fault. According to Synergy, almost a third (29.6%) of his offensive possessions are isolations. Some of these are by design, but some are also a result of Marshon stopping the ball during a possession in an attempt to create offense, usually for himself.
Being the ball-handler in pick and roll situations is the next most frequent play that Brooks uses on offense (18.4% of the time). By no means is Marshon developed as a pick and roll by player, but just by executing simple offense I believe he could make himself a more complete player and the Nets a more efficient offensive team in the process.
Take for example a possession from the Celtics game Wednesday night:
In the picture below you will see the Nets giving Marshon Brooks a high ball-screen in the center of the court. The floor is spaced with shooters – Anthony Morrow at the top of the screen, Shawne Williams in the near corner and Jordan Farmar at the near wing.
Taking a look below at the snap-shot of Marshon after he comes off the screen.
Brooks does a nice job getting around the hedger and Johan Petro who was the screener rolls hard towards the front of the rim. Indicated by the red arrow, there appears to be passing lanes (to Petro) or a driving lane for Brooks. Also, Petro’s roll has caused Farmar’s and Williams’ defenders to get stuck in deep in help. Passing to either of them would force their defenders into long closeouts and would give Farmar and Williams opportunities at three-point shots or re-driving past their closing out defender. Read more…
