What Brook Lopez's Rise Means for Brooklyn Nets' Future
The Brooklyn Nets and Brook Lopez are the class of the bottom of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
I promise that's a compliment. Even after getting blown out of the building in Atlanta Saturday night, Brooklyn's won 10 of 13 and has climbed into the No. 7 spot in the East.
Brook, it's fine. Don't be modest. Go ahead, tip your cap. Take a bow. Show us something, because this is on you.
At the start of the year, when Lopez was hobbled, looking slow and either preparing to come off the bench or actually doing it, he seemed like a different player. Maybe it was the way coach Lionel Hollins used him or his placement within the offense or a slow recovery from foot problems. Likely, it was a mix of all of that.
Either way, Lopez is playing far better basketball now than he was back in November and December.
He is averaging 22.5 points and 9.2 rebounds a night over this 13-game stretch, one that has seen Brooklyn climb from 11th in the conference all the way to seventh. Actually, Brooklyn has been the third-best team in the East since the All-Star Game. At 14-10, it's only one game worse than the Hawks since the break.
“I think the ball has been moving really freely the past number of games,” Lopez explained. “You can see everyone’s really comfortable on the court, and we’ve been gelling and playing well together.”
But it's not just about ball movement. It can also be about what's enabling such play.
Lopez has killed defenses over that time with a bevy of floaters, touch shots and hooks. He's grabbing more offensive rebounds than he ever has before, though his success on the offensive glass has tailed off a bit since mid-March.
He's improved his pick-and-roll chemistry with Deron Williams, whose play has also (maybe not so coincidentally) picked up of late. When you have a 7-footer setting killer screens and finishing with as dynamic of a low-post arsenal as any other Eastern Conference center (save for maybe Al Jefferson), your job as a point guard is going to become far easier.
Don't discount the screening, either.
One of the reasons the Nets offense struggled so mightily at the start of the year was poor screening. This Brooklyn core (Lopez, Williams, Joe Johnson, etc.) has never promoted a pick-and-roll heavy offense. In November and December, that showed.
It wasn't just ball-screening, either. It was all over.
Brooklyn players wouldn't hold their screens long enough to seal off defenders. Players running off picks wouldn't go hip-to-hip with their teammates, leaving enough room for opponents to slide between them and negate the effects of the picks altogether. But offenses evolve, even within a season.
Now, Lopez is calling the pick-and-roll the Nets' "bread and butter," as he classified it to Yes Network's Sarah Kustok after his game-winning tip-in against the New York Knicks last week.
"We wanted a pick-and-roll with D-Will," he said. "I was just able to keep it alive, and tip it in."
As the schemes expand, the offense finds comfort. And when the offense finds comfort, the Nets actually put the ball in the hoop. Over the past 13, Brooklyn's scoring is up 7.6 points per 100 possessions.
Brooklyn found itself 24th in points per possession only a few weeks ago. In the 13 games since, it's eighth.
Leave it to Brooklyn to be hipster enough to make 13 a lucky number. And it's happening ironically, of course.
So much of the offensive jump comes from not just screening quality but also screening persistence. Watch how Lopez won't be deterred after his first strong seal on Johnson's man doesn't work:
See how Lopez immediately goes back to Williams, intelligently slips a screen and finds space within Atlanta's defense? That sort of picking perseverance didn't exist on the Nets a few months ago, when we'd often see one failed ball screen lead to immediate isolation. How quickly a second pick comes is one way to gauge an offense's competence.
If the Hawks and San Antonio Spurs have taught us anything about offense, it's that screening is an underratedly integral part of the game, as essential to scoring points as dribbling or shooting. (OK, so maybe that last part was a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.)
Lopez's transformation isn't only about laying picks, though. There's a comfort within his game that wasn't present early in the year, especially when he was coming off the bench.
It almost felt like a different season, a separate team back then, but there was a time when Mason Plumlee was this team's starting center with Kevin Garnett standing beside him. So, Hollins sporadically tried Lopez and Plumlee together. They mixed about as well as toddlers and red-eye flights.
Guys like Plumlee or Cory Jefferson or Jerome Jordan had to hang around the rim, which pushed Lopez closer to the perimeter. As a result, he took more jumpers than ever before.
Through March 7, about 34 percent of his field-goal attempts came from mid-range. Brook can shoot, but that's not his style. You want someone as skilled in the paint as him to do what he does best. And since re-entering the starting lineup March 8, he's done just that. Instead of popping off screens, he's rim-diving.
Only 23 percent of Lopez's attempts have come from mid-range in the 16 games since he's rejoined the first unit, far more in line with his career average. He's seen his field-goal accuracy inside the restricted area shoot up seven percentage points during that stretch, too. Finally, we're watching the Brook Lopez we've known for years.
Lopez's revival creates a potentially difficult scenario for Brooklyn. The just-turned-27-year-old can choose to hit free agency if he declines his $16.7 million player option for 2015-16. If he does, and the Nets feel like they have to re-sign him, it further injures the long-term flexibility of a franchise that has a rigid future to start.
Popular opinion, though, seems to be swaying against that idea, promoting that the Nets center will pick up his option, take more money than he could get annually on the open market this summer, stick around Brooklyn for another season and hit free agency in 2016 when he can take advantage of a rising salary cap and another (hopefully) healthy season.
The Nets seem to have their frontcourt of next year set with Lopez and Thaddeus Young both likely returning. (Young's contract runs out during the summer of 2016.) So far, it's worked. Brooklyn's been third-best in the East since dealing for Young during the All-Star break, and it's all come together of late.
For the first time all year, the Nets are competitive. And yes, Brook Lopez, we're all still waiting on you to take your bow.
Follow Fred Katz on Twitter at @FredKatz.
All quotes obtained firsthand. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are current as of April 6 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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