IT’S A WHOLE NEW WORLD
More than four months after play stopped, Nets change approach inside Disney bubble
Let’s be real: Almost everything about the NBA restart in Orlando is outside of Jacque Vaughn’s control. Three of the interim Nets coach’s four best players are hurt or sick. The coronavirus pandemic forced the NBA into a four-month hiatus, then a bubble. Tension between the Black community and police have spilled into the NBA’s orbit and, literally, onto its courts.
Not to mention he’s coaching for his job — one he’ll have to move heaven and Earth to retain.
“There’s no playbook, no handbook for this scenario,” Vaughn says. “So a lot of it is gonna be coaching from the cortex and looking at all the options and exhausting all those options.”
Vaughn and his coaching staff faced a conundrum: The pandemic forced the closure of team practice facilities, and the Nets didn’t have their first full team practice until they cleared quarantine in the Orlando bubble.
That was 120 days since their last game, with just three weeks to go until opening night, and they were still welcoming new players to the roster.
“We don’t have much time,” Garrett Temple says. “We basically have to relearn everything.”
For Vaughn and his staff, only one option made sense: simplifying the offense. That simplicity could be Vaughn’s saving grace. It could also be his undoing.
But what exactly is simplicity?
It starts with embracing familiarity. Both Caris LeVert and Jarrett Allen say the offense hasn’t changed very much. What has changed drastically, however, is this team’s roster, which lost its size and depth over the long intermission. With so much turnover in so little time, Vaughn’s squad will rely on a few bedrock NBA tenets during this bizarre sprint through the regular season.
First and foremost, the Nets are going to play fast.
Joe Harris says there’s ‘definitely’ more of an emphasis on getting easy baskets in transition.
“A lot of that is basically based on the personnel that we have,” he says. “We’re a little bit undersized, but we have a lot of quick guards. A lot of guards that can facilitate and get downhill.”
Another tenet is spacing, and the Nets appear to have found the man to stretch the floor from the frontcourt.
With Jordan out after testing positive for COVID-19, Vaughn transformed Rodions Kurucs into a small-ball five. It’s early, and the sample size is small, but Kururcs, who has played exclusively at the center, shot 8-of-12 from downtown through three scrimmages.
“With Rodi at the five, it’s a mismatch,” LeVert says. “It just makes the court that much bigger when he’s knocking that shot down for us.”
It’s not just Kurucs. The Nets project to run a majority four-out offensive system with a minimum four shooters on the floor every second of the game. In total, Brooklyn boasts 10 players considered legitimate threats from deep.
That leads into the final tenet of Vaughn’s offense:
Selflessness.
The Nets can’t afford to play hero ball. With Irving, Durant and Dinwiddie out, they don’t have the facilities for that.
Brooklyn will run its offense through LeVert, who has an opportunity to prove he can thrive as the focal point of an offense. Irving clamored for “another piece,” and the Nets believe LeVert is just that. In his final two Orlando scrimmages, he totaled 50 points on 49% shooting. No one expects LeVert to produce like a superstar, of course. The ball will move quickly and early in every possession, and the hope is that the core principles are enough to allow LeVert to find his spots.
“We’re not really out there calling plays to get one person the basketball. The plays are just to put us in a position to get the defense to react,” Johnson said. “There were just a couple of times where I felt through the simplicity of the offense and having that spacing, that I was able to create angles and get to my spot just throughout the flow of the offense.
“Looking forward, we don’t have to have a call for one person. Everybody’s a threat.”
In truth, the Nets know they are asking Vaughn to turn water into wine: to maximize LeVert’s star potential, to put players previously buried in the G-League in positions to make an impact in games with playoff implications —ultimately, to do more with less than any other coach has at his disposal.
“My complete stamp isn’t probably on how we would play with a different roster,” he says, “but this is the roster that we have, and we’ll maximize this roster.”
Vaughn’s stamp in Orlando is a simple offense, and it’s already begun to work wonders. Johnson, for example, totaled 28 points through his last final two scrimmages and credited the Nets coach for his early success.
“Fortunately enough the offense is not very complex, they just allow you to go out there and play basketball. It makes it a lot easier,” he says. “I’ve been very fortunate to come into an offense where everybody’s looking to get everybody involved. Yesterday was my night, and now who knows? Maybe it’s somebody else’s night. I know I feel very confident that I can get in rhythm on this team.”
But will a simplified offense with a depleted roster work wonders for his job security? Again, let’s be real: Almost everything is outside of Jacque Vaughn’s control.