So much basketball, so little time. The first weekend of playoff basketball is the most wonderful time of the year. From the Logo will try to get back on a semi-regular posting schedule now with recaps of games that I manage to watch most of.
I expect the Philadelphia 76ers to sweep the Brooklyn Nets in the first round, so if I plan to write about the Nets, the sooner the better. Here are five observations from the first game of the series, a 121-101 Sixers win that felt bigger by the end.
The Spencer Dinwiddie Lob Experience
After beefing with Kyle Kuzma on social media (if you don’t know what that refers to, it isn’t worth finding out) this week, including a bizarre moment when Spencer Dinwiddie compared himself to a Jrue Holiday-type player, it would have behooved Dinwiddie to turn in a solid playoff performance. This wasn’t it. It happens, the 76ers are a tough team. One way Dinwiddie could help himself though: cutting back on his lob game. For those that don’t watch much of Dinwiddie, he tends to get…overly ambitious on his lobs. Some have an even harsher view of the matter. The repeated lobs to nowhere really hurt the Nets by boosting their turnover count in this game. There were lobs that should never have been thrown in the first place.
And there were lobs that were there for the taking, but left much to be desired on the execution front.
That last miss to a wide open Day’ron Sharpe was especially painful. Dinwiddie is an above replacement value ball handler in this league, but he might need to cut back on the lobs. As Regina George said: stop trying to make the lob happen, it’s not going to happen.
The Possession Game
This series is going to be uphill sledding for the Nets even if they bring their A game. Letting Philadelphia get 19 more shots off is a death sentence. The Sixers won the possession battle on every front. They rebounded over a third of their own misses, better than the best offensive rebounding team in the league this season. Nearly as bad, the Nets turned the ball over on over 20% of their possessions per Cleaning the Glass. The Nets as a team shot the ball well, a scorching 65% eFG% for the game; per Basketball Reference, that is the highest field goal percentage in a playoff loss by any team…ever. Some of the pre-series speculation (including from yours truly) suggested that the Nets’ best hope of winning a game or two might be to explode from beyond the arc. The post-trade Nets have set a threshold of 15 made threes per game. That is hard to do when you only get 29 attempts up.
Some of the Nets’ 19 (ouch) turnovers were purely self-inflicted. There were the Dinwiddie lobs to nowhere, but also drives that sputtered out.
The Nets should be wary of getting too sanguine about the Sixers having made 21 threes and chalking it up to a hot shooting night (more on that below). The more relevant number might be that the Sixers got 43 attempts up compared to the Nets’ 29. The Nets need to win the variance game, but first they need to play it. And besides, the Nets shot the lights out themselves. It doesn’t matter how big your bite of the apple is if you take just one bite.
Three-ladelphia
The Nets’ defensive game plan on Joel Embiid was clear from the get-go: send aggressive double teams and make the other Sixers beat them. It is a defensible strategy, but only works if the players can nail their back side rotations down perfectly. Embiid has vastly improved as a passer even if he isn’t in the same stratosphere as a Nikola Jokic. Rotating when a team ping ping pings the ball is hard to execute perfectly! And the Nets were far from perfect. Take the possession below for instance. Cam Johnson and Royce O’Neale fail to communicate as O’Neale runs over with the double on Embiid. Instead of zoning up between the corner and O’Neale’s man on the wing, Johnson stays attached to the paint, giving up the wide open look.
The other risk with the Nets’ strategy: opponents adjust. Coach Doc Rivers had his team adjust early. Watch the clip above again: PJ Tucker mucks up Johnson’s assignment by cutting across the lane right as the Nets bring the double. The Sixers shrewdly sent cutters into the lane instead of just positioning their shooters along the perimeters. The loss of distance that help defenders have to cover is outweighed by the confusion it sows. Here’s another example, with Jalen McDaniels cutting from the corner and facilitating an inside-out pass to the open De’Anthony Melton:
Even if the Sixers don’t shoot quite as well from beyond the arc (particularly on step-backs), they generated enough high quality looks that this should not be looked at as some big outlier event.
The Nets Need to Run
Philadelphia’s half-court defense was just outside the top ten in the regular season while their transition defense was just inside the bottom ten. Even if the latter weren’t the case, Brooklyn does not have enough shot creation on its team since the trade deadline. The Nets’ best hope of putting enough points on the board is to run, run, and run some more. Brooklyn needs to turn this series into a track meet. Per Cleaning the Glass, only 12% of the Nets’ possessions started with a transition play; that number needs to be way higher in the next game. A good starting point would be securing more defensive rebounds, but the Nets could try running off of Philadelphia makes as well.
In short, more of this please:
How Does Mikal Bridges Adjust?
Mikal Bridges had an impressive outing in his first playoff game as the undisputed number one option on a team. 30 points on 12/18 shooting is one of the bright spots from the loss for the Nets. The sore spot in Bridges’ stat line though: a single measly assist. The next level for Bridges will be leveraging his impressive bag and mid-range chops to bend the defense and create for his teammates.
I am curious to see how Bridges adjusts to defenses zeroing in on him. 23 of Bridges’ 30 came in the first half, with the Sixers keeping him quiet in the second half. How does Bridges adjust when the Sixers send two defenders at him. He had a couple of turnovers in Game 1 on those plays.
All evidence thus far points to Bridges eventually getting to the point where he can make defenses pay. It just might not quite be that time yet.
Does the Nets Offense Have More Levels?
Coach Jacque Vaughn has kept things fairly simple with the Nets offense since the trade deadline, not the worst choice with a group of players not used to playing with each other. One can expect a steady stream of Chicago action (a wide pin down leading into a dribble handoff) to get Mikal Bridges to his spot and double drag (staggered ball screens for a ball handler).
In its standard execution, double drag involves one screener rolling and the other popping out beyond the arc. Note that in both plays above, the ball doesn’t make it to the roller. Although the Nets score on both occasions, their inability to get Nic Claxton (and Day’ron Sharpe to a certain extent during his minutes) involved in the offense was a problem in game 1. Without any pressure on the rim, the Sixers’ perimeter defenders were able to stay home on the Nets’ shooters (see the paucity of three point attempts from the Nets above) and the Nets were forced into hunting for wild looks (see the lobs to nowhere above). I am curious to see if Coach Vaughn adds in more layers and second side action coming out of these standard sets to prise open more driving lanes and stress the Sixers defense a bit more.
One layer on the standard double drag that I liked: this decoy screen the screener double drag action where the first screener runs off of back screen, with the back screener then coming off a flare screen from the nominal roll man.
Yes please!
I still expect this to be a short series, but it should be fun to see how the Nets respond to the game 1 shellacking (and how the Sixers in turn counter).