The most underrated a part of any defensive possession is the tip: securing a rebound.
It doesn’t matter how strong the defensive rules are, how a lot size and athleticism is on the ground, how versatile the defenders are or if that versatility lets you swap one by 5 defensively.
Every protection will crumble if the opponent has a number of makes an attempt at a basket on a single possession.
Such is the state of affairs for a Nets staff that ranks second-to-last in rebounding behind solely the Dallas Mavericks, who wouldn’t have a real heart on the roster.
The Nets solely have one — Nic Claxton — who’s a lock to play each single night time. And as a result of the Nets play an aggressive type of protection tailor-made to Claxton’s means to modify defensively whereas additionally serving to from the weak facet to dam pictures on the rim, the Nets are inclined to being pummeled on the offensive glass.
“Yeah, we have to accept it. It’s truth. It’s staring us in the face,” head coach Jacque Vaughn mentioned after Sunday’s matinee loss to the Denver Nuggets.
Two Nuggets gamers — Nikola Jokic and Michael Porter Jr. — mixed to out-rebound your entire Nets beginning lineup.
“The scouting report says to try to go offensive rebound vs. the Nets, and we have to understand that and really do a diligent job of continuing to try and do it together. We can’t do it with two people, with three people. We show clips at halftime where literally we need all five people to come back and get a piece of somebody,” Vaughn mentioned.
The concern, nevertheless, is two-fold: This is hardly a well-kept secret, and the answer — crashing the glass — goes towards the core id of a staff constructed to play quick, get out in transition and generate offense by capturing an obscene variety of threes.
Not to say the Nets simply don’t have the personnel: Ben Simmons is a robust rebounder who’s out as a result of a mixture of left knee and again soreness and has no timetable for a return, and second-year heart Day’Ron Sharpe — a famous glass-cleaner — has not been in a position to crack the rotation.
Vaughn as an alternative opts to play small with both Royce O’Neale, Dorian Finney-Smith or, in uncommon circumstances, Yuta Watanabe enjoying backup 5.
It was simpler to brush the rebounding struggles underneath the rug underneath the guise of supremely proficient offensive superstars getting back from harm to avoid wasting the day.
Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, nevertheless, aren’t strolling by that door, and it is a Nets staff that should now save itself because it embarks on a stretch of video games that mission to find out whether or not or not Brooklyn might want to compete within the Play-In Tournament to solidify its seeding as an Eastern Conference playoff staff.
“I know we’re capable of doing it. We did it before,” mentioned O’Neale, who ranks second on the staff in rebounds per sport regardless of his listed top of 6-5. “Just everybody paying a little more attention to detail to it, helping Nic out.”
The loss to the Nuggets marked Brooklyn’s third in a row and moved the Nets 2.5 video games beneath the Knicks, who sit fifth within the convention. More regarding is the opposite facet of the standings: The loss moved Brooklyn only one sport forward of the seventh-seeded Miami Heat, who seem to have turned a nook after a gradual begin and have received six of their final 10 video games.
The Nets entered Monday with 11 video games remaining on the schedule. The subsequent 4 are brutal for a staff with such a evident rebounding weak point: The Nets host the Cleveland Cavaliers — who begin two seven-footers: Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley — two video games in a row. Then they journey to Miami for a date with Bam Adebayo and the surging Heat earlier than hitting the street to face Orlando for the second leg of a back-to-back.
The Magic play 5 gamers 6-10 or taller important minutes, making them a nightmare matchup for the Nets, even when their document signifies in any other case.
“You know how I am: I’m trying to really keep our guys honed in almost silo-ish in taking care of that day’s game,” Vaughn mentioned when requested to look down the street. “I don’t want our guys looking beyond these next four hours, really, of taking care of business against this team. Our hands will be full enough. So really trying to get our guys to not look ahead and just take care of today’s work.”
And whereas rebounding historically falls on the large man down low, the Nets don’t play a mode of protection that permits their heart to be parked by the rim all sport.
Claxton ranks sixteenth within the NBA in rebounding at 9.2 boards per sport. He is averaging 12.6 factors, 10.4 rebounds and a couple of.1 blocks per sport whereas capturing slightly below 60% from the sphere within the month of March alone.
The undersized O’Neale, nevertheless, averages the second-most rebounds (6.6) per sport this month. Mikal Bridges and Finney-Smith every common 4 rebounds per sport by the staff’s final 9 video games. Bridges recorded only one rebound in 31 minutes in Sunday’s loss to the Nuggets.
“[We have to] continue to harp on it, continue to crash the glass and just figure out our rotations and where we’re gonna be so we know where those rebounds are coming to,” mentioned the 6-8 Cam Johnson, who averages 4.4 rebounds per sport in Brooklyn however 5.8 rebounds by the staff’s final 9 video games. “We know who our personnel is. We had more offensive rebounds than [the Nuggets] today, so it was a better rebounding battle overall compared to the last time we played them.”
The Nets, nevertheless, are leaning into being the undersized staff attempting to win video games even when they lose the rebound margin on a nightly foundation. Playing small permits them to play quick and stand up threes in transition, an offensive level of emphasis now that operating half court docket isolation units by Durant and Irving are not an possibility.
The conundrum, in fact, is that prioritizing crashing the glass means the staff can’t get out in transition, the place they have to generate offense now that half court docket units are not as fruitful. The Nets solely had two quick break factors after they discovered themselves down 20 getting into the fourth quarter of Sunday’s loss to Denver.
“Especially when we go small and me or Doe is at the five, we all got to gang rebound,” O’Neale mentioned. “I mean that’s our advantage and playing fast. I don’t know how many fast break points we had, but we got to get a couple more. Playing fast and with pace, that’s what we’re good at.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com