Allen, Vaughn’s crew have no shot vs. Toronto sans Harris

If playoff basketball is a chess match, the loss of Joe Harris has put Brooklyn in checkmate.

The Nets were already decimated, but losing the only proven shooter they had left allowed Toronto to adjust and take away center Jarrett Allen as well. Between the Raptors crowding him and his teammates not finding him on the half-roll, Allen was all-too-invisible in a 117-92 Game 3 loss.

“It was a little bit of both. I feel like whenever I was rolling they’d always bring another man to come tag me, and I just never got a chance to look at the rim,” Allen said. “That’s just how they played and they did that excellently. As you can see I wasn’t able to get a shot up, and we were able to just kick it out to 3.”

Allen had a game-high 17 rebounds, but was held scoreless until 6:23 left in the third quarter and didn’t manage a single shot, eliminated by high-IQ defender Marc Gasol.

“They switched every pick-and-roll,” Caris LeVert said. “Made it tough for Jarrett’s usual shot attempts, which are lobs on the pick-and-roll or dropoffs on the pick-and-roll, things like that. But we’ve still got to find a way to get him the ball, get him in the game offensively. That’s on myself, on [Chris Chiozza], the guards especially. But they did a good job of taking him out of the game.”

The Nets’ game plan was also more perimeter-oriented, with interim coach Jacque Vaughn saying he wanted the Nets to put up at least 50 3-pointers. They took 51, but missed 34, not the ratio he would want.

While Tyler Johnson praised Allen’s selflessness in making the right reads on kick-outs, the Nets won’t have Harris for Sunday’s Game 4 so will have to adjust to Toronto’s adjustments.

“Just kept continuing to make adjustments, changing coverages, giving Caris different looks, giving Allen different looks,” Toronto’s Fred VanVleet said. “We tweaked some things. Caris got a little more loose this game than in the previous two due to our scheme change that we did.

“So keep trying to give them different looks, and not give the same look every game, try to keep them on their toes, keep them off-balance, and keep them guessing. So we gave Caris a little more, we gave Allen a little less. I know they missed Joe, so we were able to stay home on their other guys. It’s a chess match. You’ve got to keep continuing to make adjustments throughout each series.”