NBN Roundtable: How Did the Nets do After One Month?
By Tj Porreca
Where Do the Nets Need to Improve?
Sandy Mui: Rebounding is a major issue, as all Nets fans are very well aware of. It’s not surprising at all looking at the boxscore every game and seeing the Nets were out-rebounded. Trevor Booker is solid on the boards (thus making him a great replacement for the beloved Thaddeus Young), but he can’t be the only one doing the work. There are two 7-footers on the team– Brook Lopez and Justin Hamilton — but they’ve each been averaging less than six rebounds per game. Even Sean Kilpatrick averages more rebounds per game than Hamilton (largely due to his 14-rebound performance against the Clippers). Well, Kilpatrick won’t be pulling down 14 boards every night, so something’s gotta give. Let’s make the storybook different for a change.
TJ Porreca: The Nets have a few areas where, ideally, they’d be able to improve. Team defense is certainly an issue. Brooklyn went a stretch of over 10 games where they allowed 110 points or more to their opponents. If the Nets want to prevent losing streaks this season, they will have to play better defense. Also, with the amount of three-pointers the Nets attempt — and the fact that center Brook Lopez is one of the main sources of these three-point attempts — rebounding is a problem. During Brooklyn’s seven-game losing streak, the Nets were out-rebounded in every matchup. If Brooklyn can find a way to rebound the ball at a higher rate, and play better on the defensive end, it would go a long way toward winning games.
Justin Witmondt: The Nets need to improve in just about every area of the game of basketball. First off, more points need to be scored earlier on in the game. Waiting until the game is all but over at the end of the fourth quarter to tally up useless points is not the answer. Though the stats show that scoring is not the Nets’ main problem, you can’t stay competitive if you are out of the game at the beginning of the fourth quarter, which brings me to my next point: this team must be allergic to the third quarter. For whatever the reason may be, the Nets have struggled immensely to begin second halves of games. The ball movement has been bad, but this can be pointed towards the absence of Lin. Rebounding is a big issue for this team. When your starting center is only grabbing 5.1 rebounds per game, you know you have a problem. Finally, and most importantly, the defense of this team needs to improve. The Nets are struggling in just about every category. You name it: rebounds, assists, points, steals, blocks, free throw percentage, field goal percentage, three point percentage. But wait, there is one category the Nets have a larger number in: turnovers. Oh, right. That’s a bad thing.
Christian Milcos: Brooklyn’s efforts on defense are obviously something the team needs to improve upon. They are currently giving up the most opponent points per game at 114 per contest. While this is to be expected with having several players who have never played consistent NBA rotation minutes before, a bottom-three defense makes this team almost unbearable to watch. Another big area in which the Nets desperately need to improve upon is their high amount of turnovers. These careless mistakes on offense have been a huge reason why their opponents have been able to go on numerous runs throughout the course of every contest.
Charles Daye: Everywhere. They need to be better on defense and they need to improve on offense. Offense could be a quicker fix, there are still plenty of instances during games where I find that I’m asking myself “why aren’t they feeding Brook Lopez?”
Zach Cronin: Defense. There is only one team worse than the Nets defensively, and it’s the Portland Trail Blazers — and they’re really bad, like, awful. Brooklyn’s guards have been terrible, and their bigs routinely get pounded on the glass. On the perimeter, the Nets allow almost 11 made threes per game at a 37 percent clip and opponents hand out almost 25 assists a night (24.7, second-most in the league). Although there aren’t numbers that say how many threes get made off of assists, it almost doesn’t matter. What’s important is that teams move the ball very well against the Nets, and, more times than not, they’re hitting the open man for an easy bucket. If your team moves the ball fast enough, people will be open since the defense is forced actually to defend. It happens to every team in the league, but the worst defenses get moved more often. When an opponent can move the ball with no issues, it limits isolation plays. For the defense, iso’s are golden. A coach would much rather their defenses guard someone going one-on-one because it throws off the flow of the possession. Unfortunately, Lin returning won’t make the defense exponentially better. They’ll improve, but it won’t cure all of their woes because coaches can draw up plays where Lin’s man isn’t involved, and he won’t be as prominent in stopping it.