NETS CAN BE SUPER, TOO
They can be like Tom’s Bucs, but ‘D’ is the key
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers hoisting the Lombardi Trophy on Sunday is yet another example why the Nets need to shore their defense if they hope to win big.
The Buccaneers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV by holding a supercharged Chiefs offense, led by generational talent Patrick Mahomes, without a touchdown the entire game.
The Buccaneers, led by Tom Brady, were the only team in football to rank top-five in offense and defense this season. It’s no wonder they won it all. They were well-coached on both ends of the field, not to mention led by the best quarterback in football history.
The same truth exists in the NBA. The Toronto Raptors became 2019 NBA Champions in a season they ranked top-five in offense and defense. The Golden State Warriors also dominated as defensive juggernauts when they won the championship in 2017, ranking No. 1 in offense and No. 2 in defense.
The Nets, meanwhile, more closely resemble the Chiefs, a team that lost the Super Bowl despite owning the most explosive offense in all of football. The Buccaneers boasted their league-best rushing defense and pressured Mahomes 29 times. It’s hard to win a game if you can’t get into your offense.
The Chiefs could not score, could not get to Brady (pressured just four times), could not stop Leonard Fournette, and ultimately could not stand a chance against the league’s newly crowned champions. Sound familiar?
The Kevin Durant-Kyrie Irving-James Harden trio have the potential to rank alltime offensively just like the Mahomes-led Chiefs have in recent seasons. But even the Chiefs entered the Super Bowl with the league’s 10th-ranked defense. The Nets, even with their top offense, don’t yet have a competent defense.
That has been the Nets’ Achilles heel, ranking fourth-worst in defensive rating, averaging just under 114 points per 100 possessions. Their biggest roadblocks align more with the Bucs: The Los Angeles Lakers, which rank seventh in offense and first in defense, the Milwaukee Bucks, which rank first in offense and eighth in defense and even the Clippers, which rank second in offense and 12th in defense.
Nets head coach Steve Nash maintained that improving the defense is top priority, but he also posited a top-five defense isn’t the end-all, be-all.
Nash said he and the coaching staff have taken a realistic and analytical approach. The Nets do not have the roster makeup of a defensive juggernaut. The team has a ceiling, and they are aware of it.
They also are aware of their standing as the league’s third-ranked offense, a scoring attack still in its infant stages as the Big 3 and their supporting cast work to find their footing and rhythm playing with one another.
“We understand a lot of it is defense, and some of it is just net rating: offense and defense, combined,” Nash said. “This season, I think will be unique and could present other possibilities for contending teams. We know right now we’re not defending well enough. We know that we have a long way to go before we will defend well enough and we’ve gotta just start that journey and continue until we get there.”
If it’s of any consolation to Nets fans now trying to compare their team to the Chiefs and the Bucs, consider the Bucs struggled building chemistry early in their first season together. Three of their five losses on the season came in November alone.
“I’m so proud of these guys right here,” Brady said hoisting the trophy. “After everything we had to deal with all year. We had a rough month of November, but (Bucs head coach Bruce Arians) had all the confidence in us. The team had a lot of confidence. We came together at the right time. I think we knew this was gonna happen, didn’t we? We ended up playing our best game of the year.”
They delivered on that best game thanks to a defense that prevented the showdown from devolving into a shootout.
The Buccaneers also catered to Brady, signing his former teammates Rob Gronkowski and Antonio Brown and scouting Leonard Fournette on his command. Those three combined for all four of the touchdowns scored in Super Bowl LV.
The Nets have followed that Brady blueprint: DeAndre Jordan, Jeff Green, Bruce Brown, Landry Shamet and new signing Iman Shumpert each have relationships with Durant, Irving and/or Harden. So there might be some hope for the Nets if they pay a little more attention.
That attention needs to continue to be paid to the defensive side: The Mahomes-Tyreek Hill-Travis Kelce trio also captained one of the NFL’s top offenses, but when offense runs into a roadblock, the game reverts back to that team’s ability to get stops.
The Chiefs were unable to get those stops, and ultimately fell short of their goal of repeating as Super Bowl champions. The Nets must learn from the Buccaneers and overhaul their defense if they hope to win it all.
“It’s got to be a priority, and we’ve got to improve a lot,” Nash said of the defense. “In the NBA, I think solid defense and a great net rating is where it’s at, but you can’t be poor defensively. You just can’t so we have to improve a lot.”