Yeah, Nets was pretty bad defensively even before the Harden trade, and it got worse after the trade where they gave up a good rim protector and a 3D wing player. Their offense is insanely good, but they'll need to have average defense to be able to contend.
I don't know of a championship team that coasted on defense in the regular season, and then turned it on and became elite during the playoffs. You don't go from 20th-30th to top 10 overnight.
There is no way they can get to a top 10 as currently constructed. They need some rim protection in the worst way. It blows my mind they haven't traded for McGee. But being this bad on defense right now is all effort. They simply don't give a ****. If they legitimately tried and can find some type of rim protection and cut back on the offensive rebounds they can get to a middle of the pack D which is all they will need to win a title. I don't know if that will happen.
Yes, I agree. But he was making his jumpers and threes as well as getting in the paint. He had a great game plain and simple.
He was hitting his jumpers, but I would rather let him shoot those shots than giving him easy layups in the paint, especially when you have no paint defense to begin with. Just pack the paint and give him the shots and you'll be better off for it. To be honest, they probably should have given the Wizards more wide open shots than they did. I doubt the Wizards would have gone crazy from the 3pt line today. It's better than giving up 80 easy paint points. Westbrook will have good games against teams with no defense. If Harden played against this Nets defense, he would score 40 to 50 points every game..... unless they double him. The Nets have big problems. If you're scoring 146 points and losing, you're not going far in the playoffs. They also gave up 128 points the game before. It's not about chemistry anymore, it's about the role players being better. The defense isn't there.
Exactly. Yes, he wasn’t a good fit with Harden. Most of us knew that but he isn’t the one making the trades. That’s on management, ownership, and Harden. He’s always been a good teammate and players speak fondly of him. He was the one holding the locker room together and calling meetings when the Rockets were playing with no effort and Harden had a bad attitude. If he was a bad teammate or person or hated around the league I can understand hate watching, but to get joy in watching someone fail just to because things didn’t work out here is childish.
back to back nights where a team down 5 with 10 seconds won the game with 2 3's in regulation. crazy. also crazy that this game involved 22 fewer points than our game with the wizards last season.
I am trying to think of a former player championship coach that was as bad of defender as Nash was. I wonder how much emphasis he and D'Antoni put on defense in team meetings or practice or if there are consequences for letting players waltz down the lane. I wonder if they have a defensive specialist coach on the bench. Maybe they could pick up Bzdelik.
What does he expect when he has no actual paint defenders out there? He pretty much had a small ball lineup out in the 2nd half. It's not a coincidence the Wizard scored 84 points in that 2nd half.... and most of them were paint points. Why didn't he put Jordan back in the last 5 minutes? There is no way they score the number of points in the paint they did in the last 5 minutes. If their coach is saying stuff like that, they have absolutely no chance of winning the championship.
