Brooklyn Nets Making Right Call by Finally Reshuffling Lineup
The only consistency in the Brooklyn Nets' starting lineup is the inconsistency. Coach Lionel Hollins can't find a starting unit he likes.
It seems like half the roster has been benched and then promoted and then benched again. Or the reverse.
Brook Lopez was a starter, then he wasn't; then Sunday, he became one again. Mason Plumlee was a bench player, then a starter, then went back to the reserve unit. Jarrett Jack followed the same path. Markel Brown entered the first unit out of nowhere. Deron Williams has treaded between starter and backup point guard.
There's more: Bojan Bogdanovic, Sergey Karasev, Alan Anderson, Kevin Garnett, Mirza Teletovic, Cory Jefferson and now Thaddeus Young have all taken turns starting for Brooklyn at some point or another.
Everyone's sharing the wealth—or, more appropriately, the poverty—for a 25-36 team that just dropped its third straight game and sits on the back porch of playoff housing.
Hollins made another major lineup change after the trade deadline, going to a small starting unit that pitted Joe Johnson at power forward. But Sunday, he threw out a first unit with two more conventional bigs (Williams, Brown, Johnson, Young and Lopez) against the Utah Jazz.
Brooklyn dropped the game 95-88, but that doesn't necessarily mean the starting lineup switch was improper.
Let's back up a bit. The Nets were certainly able to play to some of their strengths by going small. Johnson offered more spacing than they've been able to get from a power forward since Teletovic exited the lineup a couple of months ago because of blood clots in his lungs which would keep him out for the season. It's also particularly uncomfortable for a conventional 4 to cover someone who owns the skill set of a shooting guard.
Going small also allowed the Nets to play a faster game. Brooklyn, which played one of the slowest paces in the NBA over the first half of the season, has averaged almost three more possessions per game since the All-Star break, when Johnson has started at the 4 in each game except for the Utah one. They still may not have a smorgasbord of athletes, but they do have lineups which encourage speeding up the tempo a little more.
“There’s more flow early versus trying to set up and run plays,” Hollins said when the Nets were riding high, having just defeated the Golden State Warriors on March 2.
Brooklyn went 4-4 in games that Johnson started at power forward post-All-Star break, but the experiment came to a quick end Sunday, when Hollins placed Lopez and Young in the first unit, effectively moving Johnson back to small forward. And going big again was probably the right decision.
Brooklyn has often struggled on the defensive glass this year, but no time more than over the past few games with Johnson at power forward. The Nets have ranked 26th in rebounding rate during that stretch.
Mostly though, going small doesn't exactly work against everyone, likely part of why Hollins went big against the Jazz, who play irregularly large human beings like Derrick Favors and Rudy Gobert. And therein lies the issue: The smaller guys just can't match up against traditional big men.
Going small can be great at times, but it may be a move best saved for proper matchups, moments when speeding the game up and spreading the floor can take precedence without Brooklyn getting pounded on the inside by an Al Jefferson-type—like in last week's 24-point shellacking from the Charlotte Hornets.
In the end, the most important trait for Brooklyn might just be consistency.
The Nets have now used 17 different starting lineups on the season, a jarring sign of instability. And it's not just about divergence within first-quarter lineups, either. It's all over.
Brown went from living among the #FreeMarkel hashtags while never, ever seeing the floor to becoming Brooklyn's most reliable wing defender in about three days. Johnson, meanwhile, didn't even get on the court during the Nets' final play of regulation against the Phoenix Suns on Friday, sitting on the bench as Jarrett Jack's buzzer miss sent the game into overtime.
Lineup indecision isn't necessarily new for Hollins-led squads. Even when he was coaching dominant Memphis Grizzlies teams, who were completely different than this closer-to-bottom-scraping Nets one, his closers were somewhat of an uncertainty. I'd say, "Imagine what he would be like if those teams didn't actually win games," but you don't have to; we're living through that experience in Brooklyn.
So, if it's just about making a decision, then maybe sticking with Lopez and Young in the starting lineup is most important just for continuity's sake. The team still plays like a collection of individuals, especially on offense, standing around the perimeter, not moving much, not reading each other's cuts as quickly as most teammates would and setting screens too early or too late for them to matter.
Developing some enforced chemistry could be most important for Brooklyn in these final 21 games.
The Nets may be floundering, but the Eastern Conference is the ultimate ... flounderer. They don't need to go nuts to make up the 2.5 games that separate them and the currently eighth-seeded Indiana Pacers. They just need to play decent, intelligent basketball. Maybe grabbing some extra rebounds and playing a more consistent style can get them there.
Fred Katz averaged almost one point per game in fifth grade but maintains that his per-36-minute numbers were astonishing. Find more of his work on ESPN's TrueHoop Network at ClipperBlog. Follow him on Twitter at @FredKatz.
All quotes obtained firsthand. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are current as of March 8 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference and NBA.com.
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