Brooklyn Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn returns from the All-Star break with a fresh contract extension. He also returns with a bevy of new players to integrate as his team makes a playoff push.
Following the trades of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant at the deadline, Mikal Bridges, Spencer Dinwiddie, Cam Johnson, and Dorian Finney-Smith immediately moved into Brooklyn's starting lineup alongside Nic Claxton. Cam Thomas has also stepped into an expanded role as a scorer off the bench. The roster overhaul has led to an identity shift.
The Nets ranked fifth in the NBA in offensive rating before Durant's MCL sprain on Jan. 8. They also ranked towards the top of the league in isolation and mid-range scoring rate. With their two stars out the door and a series of athletic wings on the way in, the team's strength has shifted to the defensive end. Brooklyn's new starting five boasts an average height of 6’8″ and an average wingspan of 7’0″, offering one of the most physically-imposing units in the league.
Vaughn highlighted that new identity when speaking about the team's areas of focus coming out of the break.
“I think the one top priority is the defensive identity that we need to form as a team,” the coach said on a Zoom call with reporters Wednesday. “Our roster is situated where that starting five really can take advantage of doing different things defensively. A bullet point under that defensive piece is, how can we turn teams over more? I think we can be a Top 10 defensive team if we take that step of turning teams over.
That's going to come from some non-traditional ways. You know me, I'm very curious and I don't mind taking risks. And so that is going to come from going into different games with different game plans in order to get us to have an identity of really stirring things up and being agitators on the defensive end.”
Sequences like this with the Nets trapping and rotating on the backline offers a glimpse of what Vaughn is referring to:
In 48 minutes together, Brooklyn's revamped starting five has posted an eye-opening 88.5 defensive rating. For reference, the best defensive rating in the league this season is 109.3 (Cleveland).
Offensively, it has been an uphill battle for the Nets in three games since the trade deadline. Without Durant and Irving, the team is left without a clear pecking order in terms of shot creation. Bridges' career-best 45-point performance in a win over Miami offered a beam of hope heading into the break.
Without his former star duo's brilliance in the halfcourt, Vaughn has emphasized the importance of pace and three-point attempts with this new iteration of the Nets. Brooklyn has taken an average of 36.7 threes over the last three games, the eighth most in the league. And the head coach continued pounding the drum for increases in those areas Wednesday.
“The offensive piece is can we play with an extreme amount of pace and transition? That's increasing our transition attempts and threes, that's our kick-aheads, that's our potential assists,” Vaughn said. “So a lot of bullet points underneath that, just because we don't have the shot creators like we used to. So we’ve got to be smart in the way we play on the offensive end.”
Vaughn's last area of focus for a team that is suddenly absent of star power was simple.
“We have to be the hardest-playing team in the league,” he said. “When you look at us on film, when you look at us live, when you look at the first possession of the game, are the Brooklyn Nets the hardest-playing team in the NBA? And so those are our three areas that we're really going to lean into in these last 24 games.”
Brooklyn sits in fifth place in the Eastern Conference as the league preps for the sprint to the finish line. The Nets' schedule the rest of the way is no cakewalk. Of their 24 remaining games, 15 come against teams that would qualify for the playoffs if they started today. Eight of those 15 matchups include the Nuggets, Bucks, and Cavaliers twice, as well as the Celtics and 76ers once.
It's safe to say there will still be a clear learning curve for the Nets coming out of the break. However, with six weeks until playoff time, the group will need to speed up that acclimation process if they hope to avoid falling into the play-in tournament for the second straight season.
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