Nylon Calculus: What’s not working for the Brooklyn Nets?

Year four of the Kenny Atkinson era in Brooklyn was not supposed to start like this. Why are the Nets struggling?

Six years removed from that infamous trade with the Boston Celtics for Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, the Brooklyn Nets completed an incredible rebuild with a “clean sweep” this offseason, signing Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and DeAndre Jordan. For the first time since Atkinson took over, there was a level of pressure and expectation surrounding this Nets team.

Despite not having Durant for the year, adding an All-NBA talent in Irving to a team that won 42 games with D’Angelo Russell was meant to propel the Nets towards home-court advantage in the Eastern Conference. In the preseason, guard Spencer Dinwiddie even talked up the team’s title aspirations.

And yet, one month into the season, Brooklyn is 5-7 with fewer wins than the lowly Charlotte Hornets. While coach Kenny Atkinson and other members of the media have attributed some of those struggles to the sheer amount of roster turnover, other teams like the Clippers, Lakers, and Heat all endured a similar amount of change while managing to maintain their level of play on the court.

So where is it going wrong for the Nets?

Pick-and-roll defense

Brooklyn’s issues start on the defensive side of the ball, where the team is currently giving up 110.3 points per 100 possessions, good for 22nd in the league. Kevin Durant is quite obviously an other-worldly talent on the offensive end, and perhaps one of the greatest scorers ever, but the Nets will benefit as much, if not more, from his production on the defensive side of the ball when he returns next season.

Over the past few seasons with the Warriors, Durant quietly found a way to turn into an extremely effective defender. KD finished above the 74th percentile in both Defensive Activity and Shot-Contesting last year, and as a switchable 7-footer presents the Nets with the high-level wing defender they so desperately crave. He won’t be taking primary responsibility for the opponent’s lead scorer, but his length, versatility and rim protection will make everyone else’s jobs easier.

Durant’s presence (and especially his switchability) will be particularly helpful in guarding the pick-and-roll. Brooklyn has opted for an unconventional approach when guarding pick-and-rolls. Kenny Atkinson has started the season instructing centers DeAndre Jordan and Jarrett Allen to sag of ball-handlers coming off picks. He has done this, presumably, because of Jordan and Allen’s value as shot-blockers and rim protectors, but also because he is especially wary of Jordan’s inability to move his feet on the perimeter. While this does encourage teams into taking more mid-range jump shots, a lot of them are open ones that NBA players are more than capable of making. Per Synergy, the Nets allow 1.00 points per possession on possessions used by pick and roll ball handlers, the highest mark in the league — and it’s not hard to see why.

This is just shooting practice for Zach LaVine.

Ditto for this Malcolm Brogdon look.

Keeping Jordan a little further back makes sense on picks due to his lack of lateral quickness, but Jarrett Allen and rookie Nic Claxton have shown an ability to stick with guards on switches and hold their own. To stop giving up these open looks, Atkinson could give Claxton, Allen, and even Jordan, some more responsibility on pick-and-rolls, and have them step up on the ball handler.

Sagging off the picks also poses another problem for Nets’ centers. By staying back in the paint, opposing ball handlers have a free run to build up momentum, leaving Jordan and Allen more prone to fouls with better finishers attacking their bodies.

Poor pick-and-roll defense has already cost the Nets two games this season. In the fourth quarter and overtime of the opener against the Timberwolves, Ryan Saunders had Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns run one pick-and-roll after another on the Nets, and no one on the team could stop them.

And there was no excuse for the defense in the loss on Nov. 2 to the Detroit Pistons, who were playing without Derrick Rose, Reggie Jackson, or Blake Griffin. In that encounter, the Nets let Bruce Brown and Andre Drummond play a two-man game for much of the fourth to hand the Pistons a win. Coach Atkinson even benched Caris LeVert towards the end of the quarter of that game in favor of Spencer Dinwiddie, who he called an “elite pick-and-roll defender,” but if Dinwiddie couldn’t keep Bruce Brown and Drummond from scoring, it’s hard to imagine him having much success in the playoffs against more talented opponents.

Halfcourt offense

On the surface, the Nets offense appears to be working. Brooklyn currently ranks 13th, scoring 108.4 points per 100 possessions — they had been much higher for most of the year but dropped after the 93-point outing in their most recent loss to the Denver Nuggets.

But, in reality, much of that is due to the Brooklyn’s impressive rebounding figures, as the Nets have a long way to go, even offensively, if they wish to have a remote chance at landing homecourt advantage in the playoffs. According to Cleaning the Glass, Brooklyn’s offense in the half-court is not nearly as efficient as it seems. The team ranks just 18th in terms of points per possession in the half-court, one spot below the injury-riddled, Zion-less New Orleans Pelicans.

In the Nets’ system last year, D’Angelo Russell averaged 6.4 minutes per game in possession of the ball. This year, Kyrie is averaging just a hair more at 6.7. But the Nets are far more stagnant on offense than they have been in previous seasons under the Marks and Atkinson regime. After finishing eighth last season with 309.0 passes per game, the Nets are down to just 252.4 this season, over 50 less per game and down to 27th in the NBA.

It’s that lack of ball movement that has the Nets logging 11.3 isolation possessions per game — third in the league and up from the 9.3 such possessions from last season. To make matters worse, Brooklyn has been quite inefficient on such attempts, scoring just 0.81 points per possession — well below the league average.

Another effect of this stagnant offense is that there is a lot of dribbling by guards without much movement from other players. A staggering 22.8 percent of Brooklyn’s attempted field goal attempts have come following a touch time of 6+ seconds, which is the third-highest mark in the league. The Nets could benefit from creating more catch-and-shoot looks for players like Joe Harris and Taurean Prince, who have shown their shooting prowess early in the season.

One other quick thing to note offensively: The Nets, in this early part of the season, have been getting to the basket a lot (39.8 percent of attempts at the rim) but have really struggled to finish, shooting just 59.0% on those looks (bottom five), per Cleaning the Glass. Some of that could be Kyrie, who’s been shooting well below his career average around the hoop and should improve back to around that mark, but definitely something to keep track of.

Turnovers

One of the most glaring weaknesses for this Nets team has been their inability to both force turnovers on the defensive end, and limit them on the offensive end. They rank 18th in terms of ball security (offensive turnover percentage) and are down in 29th in terms of forcing turnovers (defensive turnover percentage).

As I mentioned in the earlier section, the Nets have struggled a bit in their halfcourt offense. Forcing turnovers would help immensely with getting some easy buckets and could propel this offense forward. Their deficit in the turnover battle also gifts the opponents extra possessions every game. While they’ve been able to make up for it a little bit with some impressive rebounding figures, Kenny Atkinson, in the coming weeks, will surely be working on being more active in the passing lanes to help give the Nets some simple points.

The chart here shows just how poor the Nets have been in terms of their turnover issues. The Spurs are the only team that even comes close to the Nets’ lack of disruptiveness on the defensive end of the floor but they, at least, manage to mitigate the issue by turning it over less.

The signing of Iman Shumpert should help in this regard, with Kenny Atkinson even bringing up his knack for forcing turnovers as one of the reasons behind his signing, noting Shumpert “forces turnovers, which is something we’re not great at.”

Bench play

While last year’s bench mob was perhaps better known for their dancing and energy during their time on the sidelines than their play inside the lines, the 2018-19 version of the Brooklyn Nets quietly had one of the more effective bench units in the league. It was a group full of veterans who not only set the tone in the locker room and helped the young players like D’Angelo Russell, but also maintained a high standard of play on the court.

Last season’s bench units finished with a plus/minus rating of plus-1.1 per game, good for seventh in the league, but so far this year, the Nets rank in the bottom ten, with an average minus-1.6 per game, for those on the bench. This year’s roster lost the Nets’ seven most-effective players in terms of on/off net rating last year, including veterans DeMarre Carroll, Ed Davis, and Jared Dudley.

Spencer Dinwiddie is the lone holdover and, alongside DeAndre Jordan, was expected to lead one of the better backup fives in the league. But neither of them is performing up to standard this year, with Dinwiddie forcing shots and turning over the ball, and Jordan often struggling to cope with the athleticism of modern big men. Dinwiddie is shooting just 27.7 percent from deep this year, and his struggles have led to a downturn in bench production. So far this season, Brooklyn is averaging nearly ten points per game fewer from the bench than they did last season.

After a wildly successful summer, it’s all starting to come back down to earth for the Brooklyn Nets. But many of their early-season issues are fixable, and with some adjustments from Kenny Atkinson, this Irving-led team should still be able to build off the 42 wins from last season and make an impact in the playoffs.