Brooklyn Nets: 3 things to watch against road-averse Hornets

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2. Sharing is winning for Brooklyn

On the season, the Brooklyn Nets are in the middle of the pack in the NBA as far as assisted baskets go, with their 59 percent ratio of assisted field goals ranking 16th among the league’s 30 teams.

But over the last nine games, as the Nets have gone 8-1 with a seven-game winning streak thrown in, Brooklyn is seventh in the NBA with an assist percentage of 65.2 percent.

That is a trend the Nets need to continue, according to team elder statesman Jared Dudley, per Brian Lewis of the New York Post:

"“For this team, I’d say keep playing with the pass. I think sometimes we get stagnant a little bit, especially the last five minutes when guards pressure us up. We turn the ball over, make bad decisions. “{I want us to] play with the pass, keep moving the ball side-to-side. In this league, the younger the players are, they fall asleep from the ball going side-to-side and their communication is not as well keeping that ball from side-to-side.”"

The team’s two recent streaks bear that out. During their recent seven-game winning streak, the Nets averaged 26.7 assists per game, sixth-most in the NBA over that stretch, with an assist percentage of 63.4 percent.

But during their eight-game losing streak to close November and open December, the Nets had an assist percentage of 53.5 percent and averaged 20.3 assists a night, the second-fewest in the league.

Coach Kenny Atkinson said after Sunday’s 111-103 win over Phoenix, a game in which the Nets led by 20 points in the fourth quarter before getting careless, that it’s something the club needs to clean up.

"“I didn’t think we were smooth at all at the end there and we’ve got to look at that. We had some turnovers. Listen, if the game is a little closer, that’s a nail-biter. “So I’m going to put it a little on [D’Angelo Russell] and [Spencer Dinwiddie], those guys — and myself — we’ve got to sit down and find some stuff we really like to execute at the end. “It was very stop-and-go, no fluidity to what we were doing and that caused a little bit of confusion there are the end. It was not smooth.”"

Doing what they’ve been doing with ball movement during their recent run of success will go a long way toward that run continuing.