Brooklyn Nets: Offensive power outage all about timing

The Brooklyn Nets are playing outstanding defense of late, but their offense has gone in the tank. Opponents are disrupting the timing of the sets.

The Brooklyn Nets are playing the best defense in the NBA since the All-Star break, but because of what opponents are doing to them at the other end of the floor, the Nets aren’t reaping the rewards of that play, going just 6-6 over that span.

No team in the NBA has a better defensive rating than Brooklyn since the teams returned from their week-long break last month, allowing just 104.3 points per 100 possessions, nearly a full point better than the second-place Philadelphia 76ers at 105.1.

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But a team that rode its offensive wizardry through a 20-7 stretch in December and January has gone into full blackout mode when it has the ball.

The Nets’ 104.3 points per 100 possessions since the All-Star break is second-worst in the NBA, ahead of only the moribund New York Knicks’ 103.7 mark.

Coach Kenny Atkinson acknowledged after Brooklyn lost the first game of its current seven-game road trip, putting up just 44 points in the second half of a 108-96 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Atkinson told Brian Lewis of the New York Post that it’s up to the coaching staff to adjust to the adjustments.

"“I don’t subscribe to the only-defense-wins-championships. You have to be good on both sides of the ball. You need a good balance.“Globally we have not been good offensively since the All-Star break, so we’re going to have to look at it. Our decision-making has got to be a little quicker. We’re passing up shots, quite honestly.”"

What defenses are doing to the Nets starts at the point of attack, when point guards D’Angelo Russell and Spencer Dinwiddie trigger things off a pick-and-roll with centers Jarrett Allen and Ed Davis.

In this example from Saturday night’s loss to the Utah Jazz, Russell and Allen work a pick-and-roll action on the left side of the floor. The Jazz blitz it, sending Allen’s defender to meet Russell over the screen, while a help defender also slides over to cut off Russell’s access to the lane.

Russell makes the right read, kicking the ball to the other side of the floor to Joe Harris, who is a bit late arriving into the set. Harris, who is one of the best in the NBA at getting himself ready to shoot off the catch, isn’t prepared to take the catch and ends up out of rhythm, missing the look.

Harris, the NBA’s leader in 3-point shooting at 46.2 percent on the season, is getting fewer clean looks since winning the Three-Point Contest. Part of that is added defensive attention and the other part comes from what defenses are doing on the pick-and-roll.

Blitzing forces the ball out of the hands of the ball-handler much more quickly.

That means the ball is moving to spots that either (a) aren’t really where the play is designed to be, while cutters and rollers are still in motion or (b) the ball is — as in the example above — arriving before the shooter is set.

Timing is crucial to offensive basketball at the NBA level, where everyone has some degree of elite athleticism or they wouldn’t be in the league in the first place.

So a crucial part of defense is disrupting that timing, which then throws off shooters. If offensive execution is about timing, shooting is about rhythm and defense is about disrupting that rhythm.

That goes deeper than simply challenging a shot, as we’ve seen with the Nets of late. Shooters getting the ball before they are ready for it or are not in the right position throws off the rhythm of the shot.

And then you have a player whose own rhythm is still not there after a long absence.

Caris LeVert will break out at some point. He’s too skilled not to and his athleticism isn’t the problem. He’s blowing by defenders with the same ease he was before dislocating his right foot in November. The problem is that is his rhythm is off and he’s not trusting the move once he makes it.

On this play, he gets the ball from Russell and it essentially turns into a double-screen, with Russell and Allen providing the space for LeVert to curl into the lane.

He’s open at the foul line, but opts to pass up the open look and winds up rushing a push shot toward the rim. His release is hurried even though he’s not challenged by a defender and everything about his release indicates the ball is being carefully aimed rather than confidently released.

It’s as if LeVert is trying to just will the ball into the hoop rather than trusting his natural shot.

He’s missed a lot of shots since returning — he’s shooting just 35.4 percent in 15 games since he returned to the rotation on Feb. 8. And the more shots he misses, the more LeVert appears to be guiding the ball instead of shooting it.

It’s not dissimilar to a pitcher in baseball having control problems and compounding them by altering the release point of the pitch in an effort to guide it to its target instead of merely trusting his mechanics and throwing the ball fluidly.

LeVert missed his first seven shots Saturday night before heating up a pit, knocking down three of his last five.

The other effect of the defensive blitzing strategy is that it is all but eliminating the roll man, either Allen or Davis, from being a threat off of the action because there is simply not enough time for the screener to turn into a rolling receiver.

Allen had just one field goal attempt in the loss at Utah and only got four shots in Wednesday’s loss at Oklahoma City. Allen does his best offensive work when he’s rolling to the basket for lobs and dunks or is able to receive it in the middle of the lane and go strong to the rim.

With the ball-handlers having to release the rock so quickly, Allen has no time to get into those sweet spots and he doesn’t yet have the ball-handling skills to create his own look should he get the ball 18-20 feet from the rim.

It’s not something that can be corrected simply. Moving the screen action closer to the basket simply jumbles the spacing and packs more defenders into a tighter area — not ideal.

One thing could be to adjust the set to have off-ball action on both sides of the floor — even mirror actions would work — and starting the screening action more in the middle of the court instead of pushed to one side or another.

It would at least give defenses more space to have to account for and by getting double off-ball actions while in a balanced position in the middle of the floor, it could give the ball-handler another option if he’s forced to give it up quickly because of a blitz.

Mostly, what the Nets need is to get the timing of the offense back on their schedule instead of being rushed. If Brooklyn can control the timing, that means they also control the rhythm for the shooters.

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And that, as we’ve learned a lot recently, can be the difference between a splash and a clank.