As a long-suffering Brooklyn/New Jersey Nets fan since the Stephon Marbury days, I have ridden the roller coaster. I am enough of a basketball obsessive to get my jollies from watching other teams play. With the Nets, all I ask for is a team that is fun to root for. The KD/Kyrie Nets failed the test on that dimension and the 2018-19 Nets were one of my favorite Nets teams (watching a 24 point comeback in Sacramento may have cemented that).
Having turned the page on the Clean Sweep era, the Nets are fun again in my view. Some of the newest acquisitions may be on the move this offseason, but for now, this is going to be a team that is genuinely easy to root for. So what can we expect on the court? The word “length” has been thrown around a lot, with good reason. Brooklyn has a full house of rangy 3-and-D wings in Dorian Finney-Smith, Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, and Royce O’Neale. Nic Claxton and Ben Simmons, while missing the three point shooting, are both long and smothering defenders. Even Spencer Dinwiddie brings unusual size to the backcourt.
Beyond the length, Brooklyn will feature a battery of smart, plus defenders. It is no coincidence that in their first game together, this crew held the Philadelphia 76ers to 101 points and just 112.4 points per 100. Expect that number to get even better as they get more reps together. The sequence below is defensive art from start to finish:
There’s a lot of goodness in there: Joel Embiid has a mismatch on Dorian Finney-Smith, so the Nets overload the strong side of the court at the start with Cam Johnson behind Finney-Smith and Spencer Dinwiddie helping the helper by taking Johnson’s man, P. J. Tucker in the dunker spot. As soon as Embiid passes to the opposite wing, Nic Claxton and Finney-Smith execute a scram switch to get more size onto Embiid; Dinwiddie closes out hard on De’Anthony Melton while Johnson returns to PJ Tucker. Recognizing that Melton is driving past the Dinwiddie close out, Mikal Bridges sinks down to help on the drive even as Cam Johnson splits the difference between helping and covering Tucker. Finney-Smith then sends a soft close out on Tobias Harris, allowing him to match Harris’ drive. Harris ends up driving into a maze of arms, with Nic Claxton blocking him from behind. Flawless.
Here’s another example from that first quarter: Philadelphia engineers a switch and gets Cam Johnson onto Embiid. Dorian Finney-Smith immediately brings a hard double, but watch Dinwiddie and Bridges zone up perfectly on the back line. Dinwiddie comes up with the steal, but this is a collective effort:
If that is how dialed in the Nets are with no reps under their belt, their defensive ceiling could be very high. The physical tools are obvious, but the smarts and effort are what really excites.
The bigger questions for these Nets are on the other side of the ball. Where will the points come from? They just traded away two of the best isolation scorers and pure bucket getters this league has ever seen.1 Against Philadelphia, Brooklyn could only scrounge 90 points per 100 half court plays (in the 30th percentile of games this season per Cleaning the Glass). Spencer Dinwiddie is a capable ball handler and Cam Thomas has shown spark plug potential, but these Nets will struggle to score without any players that can truly bend a defense.
Expect the Nets to run a lot. Per Cleaning the Glass, the Nets generated a transition opportunity on 40% of Philadelphia’s missed shots; league average is 29%. Even in a game that ended with a muted 101-98 scoreline (somnolent by 2023 standards), the Nets had a 122 offensive rating off of missed Philadelphia field goal attempts per PBP Stats; again, for reference, the Golden State Warriors’ league-leading pace is 103.2 Getting out in transition is the easiest way to generate cheap points and as putrid as Brooklyn's half court offense was, they added 4 points per 100 possessions in transition per Cleaning the Glass. The much-maligned Ben Simmons is at his best when getting out in transition, not getting nearly enough credit for how much his reads on quick hit aheads can open up good looks.
The Nets may need to embrace early clock looks when they are there given that a better opportunity is unlikely to open up once the defense gets set. With shooters capable of spotting up from deep and no obvious alpha dog, the hope is that mentality is easier to embrace.
Johnson takes that from deep with 20 seconds left on the shot clock. That is still a good look for one of the NBA’s most capable three point shooters. Fire away!
Another way the Nets may try to scrounge points is by crashing the offensive glass, trusting their energetic defenders to cover up for them on the other side of the floor. in transition. Brooklyn hoovered up nearly a third of their own misses against Philadelphia while preventing the 76ers from running out behind them. The Sixers aren’t a team that likes to run, so expect that job to get tougher against other opponents. Still, in Dorian Finney-Smith, the Nets now have one of the best offensive rebounding forwards in the league. Dallas rebounded more of their misses with Finney-Smith on the floor and individually, he has consistently ranked in the 75th percentile or better. If anything, that number understates Finney-Smith’s offensive rebounding chops since at 6’8” he often gives up some height. He has six offensive boards through two games with the Nets.
Coach Vaughn has his work cut out in the half court. With so many new faces and no training camp, he has earned a lot of grace.3 As he learns what to do with his new toys, expect to see creative sets and ways to unlock the Nets' potent outside shooting. Spencer Dinwiddie and Cam Thomas are capable of pressuring the rim, which should trigger drive-and-kick opportunities. Despite some wayward lobs in the early going, Dinwiddie should be able to exploit Nic Claxton's vertical threat in the pick and roll.
In the Philadelphia game, Coach Vaughn ran a number of Spain pick and rolls with Dinwiddie, Claxton, and Johnson.
The timing on those sets could use improvement; the three players involved were playing their first game together and it showed. With more familiarity will come better outcomes.
Another goodie that the Nets ran to spring Johnson open: Claxton sets a down screen for Bridges into what looks like a Dinwiddie-Bridges pick and roll. But Bridges ghosts the screen, Dinwiddie goes right into a pick and roll with Claxton, drawing the help from PJ Tucker and netting Johnson a wide open look from the corner.
I love that play - it draws Philadelphia’s worst defender (Harden, duh) into the play ever so sneakily. Watch PJ Tucker pointing at Johnson drifting out to the corner. With Tucker tagging Claxton’s roll, Harden and Embiid need to coordinate switching assignments onto Johnson and Finney-Smith. Embiid is focused on the Dinwiddie-Claxton pick and roll, so there is no one to save Harden from getting taken out of the play.
The evidence of Vaughn’s creativity is there. In the meantime, the Nets are going to be a pain in the ass for most opponents, all arms and energy. Taking stock of the Nets ahead of the game, I posited that they could end up being the team many thought the Toronto Raptors would be (something Mikal Bridges also noted in his introductory press conference with Cam Johnson. That press conference is enough to make anyone fall in love with this duo. Joe Tsai should sponsor a buddy comedy featuring the two). The Nets are a trendy pick for the East’s top three to try and engineer a playoff matchup with. They do so at their own peril.
Is now a good time to mention that Kevin Durant averaged a 55-40-91 shooting line over his entire Nets tenure? They don’t even make numbers like that in video games.
What those numbers mean exactly requires going under the hood. See Basketball Reference for the pace calculation formula, but suffice to say that a larger number indicates a quicker pace.
Not to mention having to coach a reality tv show instead of a basketball team for most of his tenure with the Nets.