The playoffs are here folks and biased though I may be, it’s hard to imagine a juicier series than Brooklyn-Boston. Kevin Durant is decidedly in the pantheon of people you never bet against in a playoff series, perhaps the main reason that a not-insignificant number of people are giving the Nets a puncher’s chance along with Time Lord’s absence. This despite the Celtics having arguably been the best team in the league in 2022. There are enough and more series previews out there (check out Gibson Pyper’s for an Xs and Os one and Alec Sturm/Matt Brooks’ Nets-focused tactics preview).
I want to focus on a specific aspect of this matchup, arguably the most important one: How can the Nets defend at an acceptable enough level? Brooklyn generally doesn’t have a problem putting points on the board. Lineups with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant on the floor have scored 125 points per 100 possessions per Cleaning the Glass.1 That isn’t to say that everything is peachy perfect on the offensive end; the Nets have yet to hit on a formula for the non-Durant minutes, with the struggles especially glaring at the start of the second quarter in the play-in game against the Cavaliers. Still, the Nets put up 121 points per 100 in the Durant-only minutes. A historic offense for 85% of the game can paper over an average one for the remaining 15%.
So on the defense: Looking across the season at non-Harden lineups, the Nets have given up 114 points per 100, a bottom-ten mark. Restrict that to lineups with Durant on the floor and the mark is marginally better, but helped somewhat by bricky opponent shooting. The Nets restricted opponents in the last month of the season, but we probably shouldn’t read too much into results against the Pacers and Rockets of the league. There are warning signs all over: The Nets rely on a bevy of small guards (Kyrie, Patty Mills, Seth Curry, Goran Dragic), most of whom are liabilities on defense. The point of attack defense is abysmal. Outside of Durant and possibly Bruce Brown, the Nets don’t have plus defenders to throw at the Celtics’ wing duo of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. Opponents pound the Nets on the offensive glass; on the season, no team has had a worse defensive rebounding rate.
I don’t think everything is hopeless in Nets-land. By focusing on the things they can do well on defense and not trying to fix the things they can’t, Brooklyn may be able to do just enough in this series.
Players like Kyrie and Curry won’t become better point of attack defenders overnight. The Nets can work themselves into a pretzel trying to hide them, but for a defense that likes to switch on ball screens, that may be a losing battle. It isn’t clear that having the Nets’ best defenders guard the Celtics’ weapons (say Durant on Tatum and Bruce Brown on Jaylen Brown) does much when the Celtics can engineer a switch easily. Vulnerabilities at the point of attack also crop up when fighting over screens after all.
Crazy as it sounds, the Nets might be able to live with Tatum getting a mismatch on the perimeter and going one-on-one. Although Tatum torched the Nets for 54 points in the March meeting in Boston, many of the points were off tough makes. You live with this:
Most of Tatum’s points in that game came on pull-up jumpers after he had a mismatch. On the season, Tatum is shooting 33% on pull-up threes and and eFG% of 45% on all pull-up jump shots. The Celtics scored 0.93 points per possession on isolation on the season. If you have to live with something, it might as well be pull-ups jumpers late in the shot clock.
There is a sentiment in some quarters that Tatum is Durant-lite, capable of doing a lot of what Durant does on offense. That may happen at some point, but we aren’t there yet, not even close. To wit: Tatum has shot 41% on shots defined by NBA.com as “very tight”; that mark is 51% for Durant. Durant shoots over 50% on all mid-range shots; Tatum doesn’t crack the 40% threshold on either short or long mid-rangers. Letting Durant cook in isolation against a smaller defender is a non-starter; the same is not yet true of Tatum and the Nets shouldn’t be afraid to try it, if not for any other reason than it may be the least of all evils.
Married to that strategy should be a commitment to not overhelping. This cannot happen:
The Nets have met with a surprising amount of success when they wall off the rim and bait ballhandlers into iso-ing on the perimeter and getting a step on their man. Get the driver into the lane and he has to either shoot over the long arms of Andre Drummond/Nic Claxton/Durant, or try to thread a pass through a maze of arms.
Force the Celtics to drive into the lane and either beat you with the floater, or their shaky outside shooting. There are also positive spillovers aplenty to be had with such a strategy; by positioning more men around the rim, the Nets can ease some of their defensive rebounding woes. More to the point against the Celtics: force a steal or a leakout off a live rebound/block and the Nets get to run in transition. Even an offense as high powered as the Nets’ can use all the easy points it can get in transition against this league-best Celtics defense.
Another reason why the Nets may not want to worry too much about matching Durant up against Tatum (or Brown on the nights when he is going off): they are arguably better served with KD as a weakside help man. Not too dissimilar from how the Celtics have weaponized Robert Williams III on defense, the Nets have received tremendous value from Durant’s ability to rotate over and contest shots at the rim from the weakside.
And again, that’s a seven-footer that the Nets have in prime rebounding position even if he doesn’t come away with the block. The Nets need all the rebounding help they can get.
I see this being a big Nic Claxton series. The four-man unit of Claxton, Durant, Brown, and Kyrie could prove an x-factor. The sample size is small (just 139 possessions), but that foursome has blitzed opponents to the tune of +15 per 100 possessions. Of note is that they are holding opponents to just 102 points per 100. Some of that is opponents shooting ice cold from three, the sort of fluky variance that plays an oversized part in such small samples. However, the Claxton-Durant-Brown trio manage to force a ton of turnovers and the eye test bears this out as being sustainable. With Brown hounding drivers in from the perimeter and Claxton and Durant presenting a maze of arms, ballhandlers are often baited into a false sense of security once they get into the paint.
There’s a coherent defensive scheme to be had in all that. Let the Celtics isolate the Nets guards on the perimeter, drop the Nets bigs on pick and rolls, keep Durant as the weakside low man as much as possible. On that last point, the Nets’ ability to execute off ball switches well will be crucial. There is a big if in that: Brooklyn has gone through five minute spells where they scram off ball mismatches precisely, but the consistency just hasn’t been there across 48 minutes. Here is what it looks like when done well:
Kyrie hands the cutting Mobley off to Durant and switches onto Durant’s man (Lauri Markannen) on the perimeter. That not only obviates a mismatch down low, but also keeps Durant as the closest rim defender. So much of switching done well is also knowing when not to switch; in the clip above, Seth Curry sticks with his man rather than hand him off to Durant and risk another mismatch down low.
Again, here is what it looks like when done well:
Nic Claxton scram switches Kyrie off the bigger Kevin Love. BUT rather than have Kyrie pick up Claxton’s man in the dunker spot, the Nets execute another off ball switch, with Bruce Brown taking Claxton’s man and Kyrie ultimately taking Brown’s man in the weakside corner. With Durant out on Darius Garland, the Nets manage to keep some semblance of rim protection in Bruce Brown (to the extent that Brown is bigger, a better rebounder, and capable of a better shot contest than Irving) by the rim.
For a flawed defensive team like the Nets, there isn’t a clear path to a good defense. But there is the possibility of a good enough defense.
Bring on Game 1.
Excluding lineups with James Harden also on the floor, for obvious reasons.