Unathletic Brooklyn Nets Must Play to Their Strength, Smarts
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Age isn't as debilitating a trait in the NBA as it may seem.
Who was the NBA's oldest team last season? The Eastern Conference champion Miami Heat.
This year's top three? The Memphis Grizzlies, Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs.
Age isn't an inherent plague. It can be a vast positive. But the team who ranks fourth, the Brooklyn Nets, is putting plenty of old-man stereotypes on display.
After Tuesday night's 95-91 heartbreaking loss to the Miami Heat, the Nets' record stands at a disappointing 10-13, and this time, age really does have something to do with it.
The issue shows most with athleticism—or a lack thereof.
Deron Williams is 30 but has sustained major injuries on both his ankles in recent years. The perennially and currently hobbled 26-year-old Brook Lopez, meanwhile, runs on hot coals. Add in Kevin Garnett, Joe Johnson, Jarrett Jack and Alan Anderson, who are all on the wrong side of 30, and this Nets squad boasts one of the least athletic NBA rosters.
Still, you can't necessarily look at a team, deem it unathletic and call it a day. There are ways to win once physical growth becomes stunted, and Lionel Hollins is trying to promote those approaches as best he can.
Hollins has reinforced something at which his teams in Memphis were so adept.
"You've got to control the pace," Hollins bolstered. "You can't let a team run up and down the court. Their athleticism really shows off. You've got to keep them in the half court. Tempo is huge."
It's simple, really. The less athletic you are, the less you want your opponent to get into an athletic battle with you. Make the game about strength or size or precision. Just don't make it about who can run the fastest and jump the highest.
Clearly, this Nets squad doesn't have the talent Hollins' Grizzlies did. In his words from Monday, "This team is 10-12, and what is Memphis? 17-4, 18-3, whatever they are. You can't compare."
This isn't necessarily an issue of talent, though. It's about individual style. Even Hollins' Memphis teams—who played with two bigs (like the Nets), dominated on defense (unlike the Nets) and struggled to score on offense (kind of like the Nets)—had more athleticism than Brooklyn.
Hollins isn't just pushing pace as a key factor on the media, either. The Nets are performing better statistically in a slower game.
Let's set a 93-possession game as the fringe of the Nets' comfort zone. It's arbitrary, but it also seems to be about Brooklyn's breaking point.
The Nets are 7-4 in games under 93 possessions. They're 3-9 in contests which go over, and those three wins came against the dregs of the Eastern Conference: the Orlando Magic, New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers.
"Coach has gotten on us about trying to play the fast tempo, which is not beneficial for everybody," Johnson divulged.
The Nets have somewhat gotten away from their viscous pace with Lopez out of the lineup the past five games. Lopez is a consistent post presence down low, someone who Johnson has said the Nets "maybe force feed" at times. But managing tempo isn't just about using all 24 seconds you're allotted.
It's also about not turning the ball over. About hitting jump shots, which can lead to long rebounds and fast breaks on the other end. About prioritizing transition defense and not necessarily gunning for offensive rebounds at which you have no chance of corralling. About making easy attempts to give your defense time to get back and set up.
"When you get three or four shots blocked, you miss the easy layups at the basket, that allows the other team to go down and score, especially in transition, and whatever lead you had goes away," Hollins said almost prophetically the day before the Heat loss.
The Nets missed layups all over the place in Tuesday night's defeat. Cory Jefferson, Joe Johnson, Jerome Jordan, Mason Plumlee and Alan Anderson all missed bunnies at some point, and Jarrett Jack saw a finger roll hit back rim after getting a wide-open lane to the hoop trailing by four with under a minute to go.
There are two plausible reactions to give after reading Hollins' above quote in retrospect: 1. Nostradamus Hollins can tell the future. 2. The Nets had been dealing with the same types of struggles before they even handed a win to the Heat, a team playing on the road without Chris Bosh.
Let's go out on a limb and say it's the latter.
"You got to make plays," Hollins lambasted of the Nets' Tuesday night struggles finishing around the rim. "I don't know [how] many layups—on the fast break, we missed layups at the end. We had a chance on the out-of-bounds play to go in and cut it to two and force a foul again, and we missed the layup. So, I can't explain it."
Teams don't necessarily change overall style to take advantage of the Barclays Retirement Home, but they do go into games knowing they want to get out running if they can—even ones like the Heat, who fall under a similar "older and slower" category.
"You pick and choose the moments to speed up the game," explained second-year Heat forward James Ennis. "Every team is different."
"It's just about playing off misses, boxing out, securing the rebounds so we could get out and run," told Heat point guard Norris Cole of playing a faster game. "There's no real secret to it. Just get stops, get rebounds, be active with our hands, get the ball off the glass and go."
Activity is something the Nets have surely lacked through 23 games.
Athleticism is, after all, somewhat important to the game of basketball. And the Nets may be trying to acquire some more of it in the coming days/weeks/months.
We're already seeing the possible Lance Stephenson Heads Home headlines, which have Lance making a return to Brooklyn, where he once starred at Lincoln High School. It's especially convenient considering last week's news that Johnson, Williams and Lopez are all on the block. But even those sorts of deals would require some serious salary mending or a third team like the 76ers, who have loads of cap room, to take on some money.
(Isn't Philly destined to be the third team in any given deal where money doesn't fully match? Sam Hinkie has turned into the Henry Clay of the NBA, around purely to facilitate compromise.)
The Nets are relatively locked into this roster for the next few seasons, or so it appears. Brooklyn has most of its major players latched into deals which extend beyond this year (Lopez has a $16.7 million player option for 2015-16).
For now though, Brooklyn has a cast which is closer to lumbering than to limber, and because of that, making sure the game stays slow is the best way for it to win.
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 at WashingtonPost.com or on ESPN's TrueHoop Network at ClipperBlog.com. Follow him on Twitter at @FredKatz.
All quotes obtained firsthand unless specified otherwise. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are current as of Dec. 17 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference and NBA.com.
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