I’d envision the Nets would incline toward a focus on the basketball they play on the court instead of their latest firestorm off it.
That tends to be the messaging out of Barclays Center when some of their chief figures invite a fresh round of criticism, all things considered — and it’s when, not if; as of now, you can just about set your watch to the onset of new nonsense at the edge of Bedford and Atlantic —
so, in the interest of fairness, we should oblige them:
The Nets, right now, play horrendous basketball.
They’re 1-5, just a half-game in front of the perma-revamping Orlando Enchantment in the race for the last spot in the Eastern Meeting.
They field the NBA’s worst defense — a unit that ranks way behind everyone in points permitted per non-trash time possession and defensive bounce-back rate, and that has permitted something like one individual from the opposition to score at least 30 points in five of their six games.
(They’d probably be 6-for-6 in the event that the Pelicans hadn’t overwhelmed them so much on premiere night that Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson sat for the last couple of moments of the victory.)
The new expansion expected to solve those point-forestalling woes, previous Defensive Player of the Year second place Ben Simmons, has had a rough start to his stint in Brooklyn, struggling to pack down opponents’ top scorers and fouling at a vocation high rate as he slowly gets reacclimated to the speed and physicality of the game subsequent to spending 16 months from the hardwood.
The task of incorporating Simmons hasn’t gone much better on the opposite finish of the court, by the same token.
The three-time Elite player has scored 37 points in six games, has missed the greater part of his 2-point shots and free-toss attempts, and has kept on looking conditional in going after the basket; the main thing Kyrie Irving has said as of late that had a close universal endorsement rating was, “Shoot it, Ben!”
Brooklyn has been outscored by 22 of every 128 minutes with Irving, Simmons, and Kevin Durant on the court.
The favored starting setup of that “large three” alongside focus Nic Claxton and 3-and-D wing Royce O’Neale has scarcely scored one point for each possession.
In a close association worst pace of creation showed up because opponents go ahead and mostly overlook Claxton and Simmons, pack the paint, and challenge the Nets to attempt to beat them with the midrange jumpers they throw more regularly than everything except four different teams.
That is the reason, despite sticking with that starting five off the initial tip, lead trainer Steve Nash has started disappearing from it before and on a more regular basis; the Simmons-Claxton matching found the middle value of almost 20 minutes over Brooklyn’s first two games and just 11 minutes over its last two.