The Whiteboard: Harden-Durant Nets are looking dominant … on offense

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Two games into James Harden’s tenure with the Brooklyn Nets, the returns have certainly encouraging. Since trading an enormous cache of future draft picks and pick swaps for Harden the Nets have beaten the Magic and Bucks, with both Harden and Durant looking spectacular.

In these first two wins, they’ve both averaged more than 30 points per game and combined to average 69 points, 18.5 assists and 15.5 rebounds, collectively shooting better than 50 percent from the field and hitting 13-of-32 from beyond the arc (40.6 percent). And everyone else has feasted off the defensive attention Harden and Durant command — Joe Harris and Jeff Green are 14-of-23 on 3-pointers in two games and DeAndre Jordan already has five dunks. Most importantly, the Nets are scoring an absurd 124.2 points per 100 possessions with Harden and Durant on the floor together, a number that only dips from absurd to elite in the minutes they been staggered with only one on the floor.

The Durant-Harden chemistry has also looked strong on a two-man level. Eight of Harden’s 26 assists in Brooklyn have gone to Durant (with Durant finding Harden for buckets at the rim twice as well) and this has all been working while Harden is using considerably more possessions in isolation or as the ball-handler in the pick-and-roll than he was to begin the year in Houston.

So are the Brooklyn Nets the favorite in the Eastern Conference now?

According to FiveThirtyEight’s projections, the Brooklyn Nets now have the best odds of coming out of the Eastern Conference and only the Lakers have better odds of winning it all. But despite the positive two-game sample and increased expectations of a historically unique offensive trio the Nets still have a lot of questions to answer.

Obviously, they have yet to integrate Kyrie Irving — he is expected to make his return against the Cleveland Cavaliers, either Wednesday or Friday this week. He could throw a monkey wrench in the burgeoning offensive rhythm between Durant and Harden but he could also help prop up the minutes when they’re staggered — Brookly was outscored by four points against Milwaukee and Orlando in the 45 minutes Harden or Durant were on the floor alone.

The other issue is the Nets’ defense. They were decently effective against bench units in the minutes Durant and Harden were staggered. When they were both on the floor, they surrendered an average of 114.4 points per 100 possessions, about the same as the 29th-ranked Washington Wizards have allowed across the entire season. It’s a problem that’s likely to be exacerbated by Irving’s return — integrating him on offense is about accommodation, integrating him on defense is about overcoming well-documented patterns of ineffectiveness.

The idea that only an elite defense can win a championship is a myth but a terrible defense winning a title would be largely unprecedented. The only title winner of the last decade that did not finish the regular season in the top third of the league in defensive efficiency was the 2017-18 Golden State Warriors, who finished 11th and were still 1.0 points per 100 possessions better than the league average at that end. And, of course, that was a historically loaded team who coasted through the regular season at times. The obvious difference between that example and these Nets is that the Warriors still had a Defensive Player of the Year winner on the roster (Draymond Green) and a recent history of playing elite defense. These Nets obviously do not.

Obviously, we’re talking about a two-game sample and it’s too soon to get lost in the criticisms of their defensive ceiling. But it’s a legitimate question that will need to be answered and it should rightly be tempering any wild reactions to a two-game sample of elite offense. The Nets look great, but they still have a lot to prove.

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