Second stand
Nets need to improve their ‘D’ after break
The Nets have a week to get their minds and bodies right, and then 23 games to right their season.
With their defense exposed like an open wound, it remains to be seen if they can.
“We have to come back with a bit of a chip on our shoulder — we’re struggling right now – and see if we can make some money after the AllStar break, see if we can come back focused,” coach Kenny Atkinson said. “That’s frustrating for all of us. We have to turn it around. … We’re kind of stagnating right now.”
The Nets (19-40) stumbled headlong into the break on a seven-game losing skid, dropping 11-of-12 and sitting just a game above the NBA cellar. It’s no coincidence their struggles coincided with injuries to Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Caris LeVert, both of whom are to be re-evaluated next week.
“We’re not rebounding the ball like we need to, we’re not defending like we need to and that’s not going to get it done,” Atkinson said. “It’s not going to get the win.”
A break may be exactly what they need.
“It’s time to get away, get away from basketball. You need that sometimes to come back and reflect and realize what you come to do and what your job is,” D’Angelo Russell said. “For a team like us, we’re losing and we have to figure out a few things. It’ll be a great time for us to debrief and figure it out.”
It’s not hard to figure out where their struggles started. On Jan. 22, the Nets sat at 18-29 and were ranked 17th in the NBA in defensive rating at 106.1. They’ve gone just 1-11 since with the secondworst defensive rating in the league at 115.0, as trades and injuries have stripped the roster of its best defenders.
“Until we fix up our defense it’s going to be tough to get a W. That’s the way it is. We’re going to look at our coverages, look at who’s in the game,” said Atkinson, who will use the break to assess rotation changes. “For sure. We’re trying to figure it out with guys in and out.
“We’re trying the best we can to find the right lineups that work out there. We’ve tried a bunch of stuff. We’ve gone small a ton, we’ve tried bigger lineups, we’ve tried twoguard lineups. We’re still searching. When you’re in a losing streak like this, you’re trying to find that magic formula, but we haven’t found it.”
Do they even have the right ingredients for the formula?
Their defensive problems aren’t one player, but team-wide. They’ve not only lost Hollis-Jefferson and LeVert. In their rebuild, they’ve shipped out veterans Trevor Booker and Tyler Zeller while taking on defensively challenged youngsters Russell, Jahlil Okafor and Nik Stauskas.
Seventeen of the 22 Nets who have played this season are below the league-average in defensive rating (106.0), including everybody in the rotation except Dante Cunningham, acquired at the trade deadline.
Since their collapse started, Cunningham doesn’t appear in NBA.com’s list (he’s played just three games) with Hollis-Jefferson and Spencer Dinwiddie the highestranked regulars. They check in at just 266th and 326th out of 433 play- ers. The rest of the rotation players are near the bottom of the league as individuals, which does not bode well for the team.
The Nets are banking on the return of Hollis-Jefferson and LeVert, and Cunningham getting in sync with his new teammates.
“[Cunningham is] going to help us. I can see it right off the bat,” Atkinson said. “He gives us something we need. We need rebounding, we need physicality. He knows how to bang in this league.”