Brooklyn Nets: Assessing theories on too much ball dominance so far

The Brooklyn Nets have been maddeningly inconsistent through the first quarter of the 2020-21 season and their latest stretch of games is a prime example of that, as they’ve lost three of four after a four-game winning streak that had them poised to supplant the Philadelphia 76ers as the top seed in the East.

While the Nets’ 14-11 record is nothing to scoff at, it’s a far cry from what fans expected at this stage of the campaign, especially after the blockbuster acquisition of James Harden. Everybody expected growing pains, and the coaching staff is still experimenting with different lineups, but they’re extremely lucky to be holding down the No. 3 seed with teams like Boston, Indiana and Toronto struggling to put together a string of wins early on.

A large portion of analysts have attributed Brooklyn’s inconsistencies to a lack of ball movement on offense, so let’s attempt to assess whether those theories hold any substance. The following stat would suggest otherwise, and actually highlights the seriousness of one of their most damning issues: getting stops on defense.

It’s befuddling to think that people are nitpicking the Nets’ league-leading offense.

The last thing we want is to come off like we know better than the experts, but asserting that the Nets have too many possessions in which one of Harden, Kevin Durant or Kyrie Irving dribbles the air out of the ball is really grabbing the low-hanging fruit. That’s bound to happen when you have three ball-dominant guards, all of whom are established superstars, on the same team.

Their offense might be not a carbon copy of the Warriors’ unselfish brand when they went to the NBA Finals for five straight seasons from 2015 to 2019, but let’s not act like Brooklyn isn’t on pace to shatter the single-season record for offensive rating.

The following possession down the stretch against Miami a few weeks back is a testament to how far the Nets have come in the ball-movement department since the season started. All three of Harden, Joe Harris and Jeff Green passed up open looks to find a wide open Irving underneath the basket for a layup.

These aesthetically-pleasing sequences transpire more than you would think, but analysts want to harp on the possessions in which just one or two players touch the ball simply because that fits the narrative of a team that rosters three of the best isolation talents in the history of the sport.

Of course, it would be comforting to see somebody like Harris, who’s currently leading the league in three-point percentage at 49.7% (!), get up more than 6.8 threes per game, but it’d be a different story if there weren’t three Hall of Fame talents getting the lion’s share of touches per possession ahead of him.

Don’t get it twisted, Nets fans: if there’s anything that plays a role in Brooklyn’s eventual demise, it will be their historically bad defense, the impossibly high rate at which they’re giving up offensive rebounds and their lack of bench scoring. Their offensive blueprint is hardly something to complain about through the first 25 games.

Brooklyn Nets: This lineup might actually fix team’s defensive woes

The Brooklyn Nets are allowing just 100 points per 100 possessions in a lineup that features DeAndre Jordan at center, which is well above average.