Nets Are Scorching

Before the season began, ESPN’s John Hollinger was asked in a chat if he thought Brook Lopez had the potential to be a 20 and 10 guy (points and rebounds) this season. Hollinger, a big Lopez advocate last season, even suggesting Lopez was as much of a candidate for Rookie of the Year as eventual winner Derek Rose, told the questioner that he liked Lopez a lot, but it was a “major stretch” to expect him to reach that elite 20-10 level.

But Lopez is proving Hollinger, and some of his other critics who say he’s not athletic enough to become a dominant NBA center, wrong. After 20 games, Lopez is averaging 18.9 points, 9.2 rebounds and 2.3 blocks per game, and is probably playing the best basketball of his career right now.In his last six games, Lopez is averaging 24.7 points and 10.5 rebounds a game and looks to be reestablishing the chemistry he had with Devin Harris last season. Against the Knicks yesterday, Harris and Lopez were working well with the pick and roll early until New York went zone and started clogging the lane.

As recorded by Basketball-Reference and pointed out by Nets Daily, two of Brook’s recent performances have placed him in an elite group as one of the youngest centers in the NBA since 1986-87 to have scored 30 points and grabbed 10 rebounds multiple times. Lopez actually first accomplished this feat last season against Oklahoma City, making him the fourth youngest center in history to accomplish this. But with his two recent games against Portland (32-14) and Charlotte (31-14), Lopez is the first player under 22 to have at least 30 points and 10 rebounds multiple times since Dwight Howard in 2007. Other under 22 centers who have done it multiple times since 1986-87 are Shaquille O’Neal (one of the best ever) and Brad Daugherty (one of the elite centers in the late 80s an early 90s).

That’s obviously great company to be in. Looking at Lopez’s advanced statistics, he’s improved from last season in nearly every way. His Player Efficiency Rating is at around 19.7 right now, up from 17.94 last season. He’s scoring more points per 40 minutes this season, though his rebound rate is down slightly (14.3, down from 15.8 last year). The one area where Lopez has really disappointed this season, is his field goal percentage, which is around 48 percent – down from 53 percent last year. That has a lot to do with Brook’s shot selection this season. According to 82games, about 48 percent of all of Lopez’s field goal attempts have been jumpers, up from 39 percent last season.

As Sebastian pointed out last week and in his pregame report yesterday, Lopez might see his usage rate increase while moving away from the jump shots under Kiki Vandeweghe and Del Harris. On Friday, only one of Lopez’s 22 field goal attempts was outside of 15 feet. Yesterday, three of his nine attempts was outside of 15 feet. If Kiki and Harris really stress working Lopez in the post more, that 20 and 10 once thought to be a pipe dream by Hollinger, could become a reality.

Now the Mavs are most certainly not a one man team, but if you can stop Dirk, you are well on your way to getting a W.  The only problem is, you have to stop Dirk.  Dirk has become a legitimate MVP candidate (well, as legitimate as you can be a quarter through the season) by averaging 27.2 points per game, along with 8.5 rebounds per game.  A few times this year Dirk has single-handedly won the Mavs games.  Let’s take a look at some plays involving Dirk, and see what the Nets can do to stop him.

Read more…

Disclaimer:  Before we get started, this isn’t a post about Ryan Anderson.  He will not be mentioned here, and I don’t expect to see his name in the comments.  If you read this and still feel like telling me that Ryan Anderson is a better player, send me an e-mail, it is on the site.  This is just an evaluation of Courtney Lee.

Onto Courtney Lee.  The season is 17 games old.  It is nearly a quarter over already, and I thought that now is as good as a time as any to take a look at Courtney Lee’s game.  Oh and yes, I am in fact serious about the title by the way.  Courtney Lee has been getting bashed by Nets’ fans for his poor performances, but I really do not know why.  When I sit down and think about it, there are two reasons.  The first, people tend to just look at the shooting numbers and the points.  The second reason is that people have expected him to improve greatly from his rookie season right away (I fall into this group), not really taken into consideration he left a really good team where he was the 4th, 5th, or 6th option and went to a team that he is the third option where defenses focus on taking him away.  Courtney taking Vince Carter’s (and in some fans eyes, being traded for him) roster spot probably has something to do with it too, no matter how unfair that is.

The numbers aren’t bias though, and what the numbers tell us is that if you exclude the shooting (don’t worry I have an explanation for this) Courtney Lee is doing everything else better than he was doing in Orlando.  It isn’t because he is getting more minutes either.  Through 11 games this year, Courtney is averaging the same minutes per game as he was in Orlando during the regular season (25.2 MPG).

All other data used in this post is from Hoopdata.com

Read more…

When talking with reporters after Lawrence Frank was fired Sunday, Rafer Alston said that sometimes “players need to go” when a team is struggling as the Nets have. I hope Alston believes these sentiments, because coincidentally, Rafer would be the first person  I would fire based on poor performance, with Bobby Simmons running a very close second.

Yes, Alston and Simmons have been that bad this season. These two players are so bad, they hardly resemble NBA players anymore, yet because of injuries, and coaching decisions, they both have logged major minutes all season, and have played a pivotal role in the Nets historically heinous start.

Read more…

When a team is struggling, it’s very easy for fans to clamor for that one guy off the bench who’s not getting a lot of playing time. In the case of Sean Williams and the Nets, Williams absolutely needs to be playing more, because there are a number of statistical indicators that show the Nets are a better team this season when SWat is on the court.

For the first few weeks of the season (let’s say, until about the 0-8 mark for the Nets), Williams spent a majority of the team’s games racking up “DNP – Coach’s Decision.” While the Nets were suiting up eight healthy bodies for many of those games, it was somewhat understandable why coach Lawrence Frank hesitated to Call Williams’ number. There’s no doubt that Williams has a number of athletic gifts, but in his first two seasons, he’s really never been able to put things together on the court. After an okayish rookie season, where he put up a PER (Player Efficiency Rating) of 13.84, a shade below league average, Williams had a disaster of a sophomore campaign, shooting 42 percent from the field, scoring 8.7 points per 40 minutes, turning the ball over on 16.2 percent of his possessions, fouling once every five minutes, and sporting a PER of 8.84. Williams second-season also featured such behavioral issues as getting thrown out of a D-League game and getting arrested in March after allegedly throwing a computer monitor at a store clerk in Denver.

But if there was ever a case of “that was then, this is now,” the early stages of Sean Williams’ 2009-10 campaign is it. While he’s only played in about 18 percent of his team’s total minutes, he’s leading the Nets in simple rating, a metric used on 82games that takes into account a player’s +/- along with a team’s production when a certain player is on the court versus when that player is off the court.

With Williams, the Nets are +6.2 when he’s on the court and -14.0 when he’s off the court, good for a net gain of +20.1. There are currently two five-man floor units that are sporting a positive +/- according to 82games, and both of them feature Sean Williams. Most notably, a rotation of Chris Douglas-Roberts-Terrence Williams-Trenton Hassell- Bobby Simmons and Sean Williams is sporting a +15 in the 17.2 minutes they’ve played together this season. The group has an offensive efficiency of 110, a defensive efficiency of 60 and a win percentage of 100. A second rotation of Rafer Alston- CDR- Hassell- Sean Williams and Brook Lopez has a +1 in 18.6 minutes, with an offensive efficiency of 117, a defensive efficiency of 119 and a win percentage of 100.

Read more…

We have looked at the Nets start every which way and while, for the most part, injuries to blame, I wanted to look at what was actually happening on the court. A good way to do that is to look at the four factors. Before we start though, lets talk a little bit about what the four factors are.

In his book, Basketball On Paper, Dean Oliver introduces the theory of the four factors.  We’ll let him tell you about it:

What Basketball on Paper also adds is that these ratings can be broken down into four elements of the game: shooting, turnovers, rebounding, and getting to the foul line. It is those four elements, or “Four Factors,” that really start allowing a strategic understanding of the game.

He then goes on to explain that these factors aren’t just for one side of the basketball.  When looking at the four factors, you want to look at both the offensive and defensive numbers:

So those are the Four Factors, but don’t forget that it is four each for both the offense and defense. A team’s offense must shoot well, but its defense must also shut down an opponent’s shooting. A team’s offense must follow its own misses with offensive boards, but it also needs to keep its opponents off the glass by getting defensive boards.

So now that we have an idea of what the four factors include, lets look at them individually in terms of the Nets season so far (All data from here on out come from Hoopdata.com):

Read more…

Brandon Jennings has been playing very well as of late.  How well?  Well, for those of you that have been living in a cave during the past week, he put up 55 against the Warriors recently.  The Bucks won the game, but only by 4 points.  So what does this tell me, if you can keep Jennings from putting up 55, you have a good chance at beating the Bucks.  The Nets play the Bucks tonight, so I thought it would be fun to rewatch that game (Bucks vs. Warriors) and see how the Warriors defended him and if they did anything wrong.  Well, they did a lot wrong.  Fortunately for us, we can look at what they did wrong, and use that as a “what not-to-do” kind of thing:

Off The Ball Defense

When you are dealing with Brandon Jennings, you must know where he is on the court at all times.  He moves well without the ball, so if you are caught peeking, he will cut on you and get an easy look:

Look at how Monta Ellis is playing Jennings.  That is wrong.  I mean, he is in the right position on the court, but look at how he is just staring at the basketball.  Here, Jennings could go backdoor and get a lob with no one trying to stop him.  A big key to stopping Brandon Jennings is forcing him to take all jumpers, you don’t want him getting easy buckets.  A way to keep him from getting easy buckets is to make sure the guy covering him has an eye on him to prevent backdoor cuts.

Read more…

Being a rookie in the NBA is tough.  I mean, I don’t know it to be fact (and despite the fact that Brandon Jennings doesn’t think so), but I am pretty sure the jump from college to the pros is difficult.  You have to adjust to the speed, the physicality, and to the new sets that are being ran.  Continuing with my assumptions, I would assume it is pretty hard to learn one position in the NBA, let alone 4.  That is what Terrence Williams is doing right now.

When the Nets drafted Terrence Williams, they were really excited about implementing his versatility, which is what they believed his biggest strength is.  As soon as he arrived in camp, everyone was talking about him having the skill-set to be a “point-forward.”  However, with all of the injuries the Nets have been forced to use Terrence Williams in ways nobody could have imagined.  Right now, he is the back-up point guard, a back-up at the sg spot (has even started a game here), a back-up/starter at the 3, and when the Nets go small, he even plays the 4 once in a while.  In fact, according to 82games.com Terrence Williams has logged key minutes at each of these 4 positions:

As you can see he has played at least 3% of the team’s total minutes at 4 different spots.  When I talked to Terrence Williams yesterday he told me, “I like playing four positions, why wouldn’t I?”  Terrence asked, and he concluded his answer by saying, “It’s basketball at the end of the day.”  I don’t think it is as simple as that though.  I mean just because he has the skill-set to play these positions doesn’t mean he has been effective in these spots.  As a matter of fact, Terrence has only been “truly successful” at one of these positions.

Read more…