The Brooklyn Nets are a formidable team on paper (“The Dunder Mifflin Brooklyn Nets”, perennially good “on paper”, as Zach Lowe has noted). One glaring hole on the roster is at the 5, where the Nets only have promising-but-slight Nic Claxton and second year big man Day’Ron Sharpe currently signed. Even as the 2021-22 dumpster fire last season wrapped up, Nets personnel weren’t shy about fueling Ben-Simmons-at-center talk.
Lineups with Simmons at the 5 are going to be rough on defense (even with the newly acquired Royce O’Neal), so the bet is that they overwhelm opponents on offense. Simmons is one of the league’s pre-eminent transition forces; per Cleaning the Glass, his Philly teams consistently ranked in the 100th percentile for the frequency with which they ran. The transition offense should be potent, with Simmons peppering shooters like Joe Harris and Kyrie Irving for transition threes, or getting to the rim in the open court himself. In the half court, the logic is that subbing in a shooter for Claxton mitigates any spacing issues presented by Simmons’ own aversion to shooting.
In those half court settings, the Nets might try running a 5-out Delay offense rather than stationing Simmons in the dunker’s spot as was typical in Philadelphia.1 Here’s how Gibson Pyper and Ben Falk describe Delay sets in their excellent Basketball Xs and Os course.
A team runs Delay by starting in a 5-out set and passing the ball to the center at the top of the key. From there, there are many options, as the two pairs of players on either side of the floor can screen for each other or set up a dribble handoff with the center…Delay is a 5-out set with great spacing, quick actions, and where the center handling the ball at the top of the key pulls the opposing rim protector out of the paint. It also tends to be more based on reads than a particular pattern, as players are given the freedom to make the action they think is best in the moment and the other players react to it.
While many teams run 5-out Delay sets, Mike D’Antoni is the coach who perhaps popularized it the most in the modern NBA, starting with David Lee in New York and then especially with Clint Capela on the 2016-2020 Houston Rockets teams. Watch Ryan Nguyen’s short compilation of D’Antoni’s Rockets sets:
Clint Capela is about as adventurous a shooter as Ben Simmons is, so it is reasonable to expect opposing centers to play them similarly. However, Simmons is both a better passer and a quicker driver than Capela. Imagine Simmons in Capela’s place, say on the play at the 19 second mark of that video. Give Simmons that much space and an emptying strong side and one could imagine him turning the corner on a slower opposing center with a lane to the hoop.
Simmons’ superior driving ability presents the Nets with an additional option out of Delay sets than most centers provide. Capela barely registered any drives in those Rockets years per NBA Advanced Stats. Or how about Kenneth Faried faking the dribble handoff at 1:18 and powering to the hoop ala Draymond Green? Giannis Antetokounmpo aside, very few non-traditional centers present that sort of driving threat?
The Nets have some familiarity with this. In Game 3 of the 2019 Nets-Sixers playoff matchup, Simmons carried the Sixers to a win in the absence of Joel Embiid. He showed the dangers of giving him a runway in the half-court.
Oh hey, here’s the fake dribble handoff as well.
If there is one person well versed with the Mike D’Antoni playbook, it is Steve Nash. Hopefully part of the revamped offense involves a look at what Simmons can do in this role.
I don’t have any insight into the coaching staff’s plans, this is a suggestion rather than an assertion.