How the Brooklyn Nets have suddenly come alive
"Unexpected" would be a good word for the Nets' recent four-game winning streak. The team had just lost six of their last seven--including games to the woeful Sixers and reeling Bulls--to drop to 10-21 on the season, well out of the playoffs hunt and looking like they might be on pace to serve up a top-five draft pick to the Atlanta Hawks come June. Now, after their four-game burst of winning, not only have they escaped the Eastern Conference cellar, they've actually climbed their way to second place in the Atlantic Division, and most incredibly in the midst of this disaster season of disaster seasons, would actually be the East's eighth seed if the postseason started today.
As unlikely as this would be taken in abstract, it's triply so when considering two other factors. First, the four wins have hardly represented the Nets feasting on the few teams weaker than even they. They got one cupcake game, at home against the Cavs without Kyrie Irving, but the other three have been legitimate tests: OKC on the road, Atlanta and Golden State at home. Sure, OKC and Atlanta have suffered notable injuries, and the Warriors were at the end of an eight-game road trip and on the wrong end of a back-to-back, but these are still playoff-bound teams, with rosters that would've wiped the floor with the Nets at most other points this season.
And the wins are especially impressive when taking the other mitigating factor into account: The Nets have had a couple notable injuries of their own. Not only are they still without top producer Brook Lopez, having been lost for the season with a broken foot long ago, but they've also been without once-and-possibly-future franchise player Deron Williams for the last two games of the win streak, D-Will saddled with a walking boot after suffering the latest in a long series of ankle injuries. Even at their healthiest, this team couldn't seem to get their act together for more than a game or two at a time, and now that they're down their top two players--and facing some top competition--they're playing their best basketball of the season.
How the hell is this happening? Well, first off, in a season this wonky--did you see the Suns win that game in Minnesota last night?--you really shouldn't be taken by surprise by anything anymore, so stop looking so shocked already. But if you actually want some logic put behind it, here's your best crack:
1. J-J-J-JOOOOOEEEE JOHNNNNNSONNNN!!! The Armadillo Cowboy was mired in one of the worst shooting slumps of his career before this week, scoring in the single-digits in five straight games and shooting just 30% (and 17% from three) over that stretch--which includes the first two outings of the Nets four-game streak, where D-Will was still around to pick up the slack (a combined 50 points on 17-27 shooting--get well soon, Deron). With Williams out of the last two, however, Joe Johnson has risen to the occasion, scoring a combined 50 points of his own, albeit on less efficient 18-39 shooting. Someone has to shoulder the load for these undermanned Nets, and Joe Johnson is that guy you can throw the ball to at any point in the game and ask him to get you a bucket, which he's been doing with decent success in the last two wins.
Of course, Joe is best with the ball at the very end of the game--best in the league, in fact. If you didn't see the clutch stats for Joe after he made the game-winning, buzzer-beating jumper against the Thunder--one of just four makes for him on the game, but obviously a pretty important one--they're pretty incredible: He's an immaculate 6-6 in the final ten seconds of games over the last two minutes when his team is tied or down three or less, a number that drops to a ho-hum 12-14 when you extend it to the final half-minute. (Over the same time period, Nets fans have been gleeful to point out, Carmelo Anthony has been just 1-16.)
Last night against the Warriors, Joe didn't get the chance to make any clutch jumpers in the final 30 seconds, so all he did was hit four consecutive clutch free throws, keeping the game in two-possession territory, and just out of reach for the absolutely petrifying Stephen Curry. The Nets haven't been in a ton of close games this year, but when they have, having Joe Cool around to seal the deal is a hell of a luxury.
2. The return of AK-47. You know what the Nets' record is the nine games this year when Andrei Kirilenko is in the lineup? 6-3. Small sample, of course, and it's hardly just Kirilenko's doing when the team wins games, but I saw their game against the Hawks in person at Barclays, and I was a little taken aback by how large an impact AK had on the game when he was on the floor. The guy was just 1-3 from the floor, but he made every extra pass, set countless picks and back screens to free up teammates, extended a whole bunch of possessions with rebound tips and hustling for loose balls, and was even active enough to get to the line ten times in just 21 minutes.
Every game, it seems like he makes a couple of those plays at key points of the night, and even though his superficial stats aren't overwhelming--eight points, three boards and two assists over the course of the win streak--he's doing it with extreme efficiency (56% FG, just one TOV, five FTAs a game), and giving the Nets a boost whenever he's in there. Once he gets a little healthier and can play more than 20 minutes a night--which he'll probably need to do on this banged up roster--he'll probably get to pad his stats a little more, and continue to prove everyone right who predicted he'd be the free agency steal of the off-season.
3. Much less KG. At the beginning of the season, it seemed like the Nets would make a point of force-feeding Garnett in the high post early, getting him some touches in his sweet spot in an attempt to get him going for the games. Well, going he did not get--over his first 12 games, he was averaging about three makes in about nine attempts a game, a terrible conversion rate for a big man and one which always seemed to get the Nets in early holes. His efficiency cratering, it looked like KG was just about done as a pro in his 19th year.
Well, it took the Nets about two months, but it appears they have come up with a solution to this problem--just stop running plays for Garnett. He's shooting much less in the three games of the Nets' four-game win streak that he's appeared in than he had the season's first month (just 13 combined attempts), and he's only reached double-digits in FGAs once in his last 12 games. He's not scoring much like this, obviously, but he's not hurting the team with clanged jumpers that lead to runouts the other way, but he's still rebounding like a beast, and without worrying about offense, he has more energy to contribute on the defensive end, as he did in last night's game with a season-high four steals, including the essentially game-sealing strip of Curry.
He was also there for the Nets when they needed some late scoring. Maybe it was due to still having his legs with his minimal early-game usage, but he converted on four consecutive fourth-quarter attempts for Brooklyn, including a vintage stepback along the basline, ending up with probably the best box score line of his modest 2013-14 season--13 points on 5-7 shooting, with five boards and four swipes. If the Nets could consistently get that kind of low-volume, high-efficiency production from KG at this point in the season (and this point in his career), they undoubtedly would take it.
4. Playing at their pace. The Nets know at this point that with their older roster, missing two of its only productive under-30 players, they're not gonna win an up-and-down game. They're by nature a plodding, deliberate, half-court-oriented team, and that's just about the only way they can play right now. However, what they've done a good job of doing over their four-game winning streak is forcing opponents to play their style, without letting them burn Brooklyn repeatedly in the open court. Opponents have averaged just over 10 fast break points a game against them over this stretch, well below the average that the Nets give up, and below most of the individual averages of the teams they've played.
Even against Golden State last night, who managed to rip 15 fast-break points against the Nets--the highest of their streak thusfar--Brooklyn managed to lock them down in the fourth quarter, using a lot of the shot clock, getting back on D, fouling if they had to, and slowing the game to a lurching crawl, stubbornly refusing to let the white-hot Warriors run them out of the building. Consequently, the Dubs managed just 22 points in the quarter, and 0 over a four-minute stretch towards the end of the quarter, in which the Nets managed to build just enough separation to secure the victory. It's not glamorous, it's not particularly exciting*--unless you're a Nets fan, anyway--but it's effective, and it bodes well for the team's suddenly existent postseason chances.
*That's not to say that it's all dribble, dribble, stepback for the Nets, though. Check out this vicious Shaun Livingston dunk from last night:
And this even nastier slam past Stephen Curry, which unfortunately was waived off due to a foul on the floor:
5. Jason Kidd not wearing a tie. When you look at the Nets' four victories this year, you notice two things about them that really stand apart from all the other stats:
1. They all occurred in the 2014 calendar year. (New Year's Resolution: ACTUALLY WIN SOME DAMN BALLGAMES.)
2. They all featured a tieless Jason Kidd on the sideline.
That's right--since the Nets' embattled new head coach has decided to go loose-collared with his sideline attire, the Nets are undefeated. A comfortable coach is a happy coach is a productive coach, and there's simply no denying the galvanizing effect that Kidd's new business-casual look has had on his veteran squad. Most importantly, it's one step further to Kidd realizing his fashion destiny of looking exactly like world-famous rapper and party-starter Armando Christian Perez, better known as Pitbull:
Of course, the four-game hotness doesn't mean that the Nets season is all turned around or anything--my Philadelphia 76ers just managed a win streak of similar length of their own, all on the road against Western Conference teams, only to get positively blown out in their next two games by the Timberwolves and Cavaliers. The Nets will have a very good chance to lose their own momentum on Friday against the Heat, in what will surely come to be known as the Nickname Bowl. Here's hoping the Nets can keep it up to a some extent, though--we need some stability in this damn conference, and the Nets seem as good a team as any to start providing it.