PHILADELPHIA — When DeAndre Jordan arrived in Brooklyn in the summertime of 2019, Spencer Dinwiddie needed to re-learn alley-oops. Jordan was a one-footed jumper, and Jarrett Allen jumped off two ft. Dinwiddie needed to be taught the distinction in cadence when throwing lob passes. The turnovers had been excessive earlier than he discovered his rhythm.
Game 1′s lob-pass nightmare, the beginning Nets guard mentioned, shouldn’t be attributed to the identical struggles — regardless that Dinwiddie returned to a new-look Brooklyn staff this season after pit stops with the Washington Wizards and Dallas Mavericks.
It’s unclear the place the staff locations blame for the miscommunications on alley-oop passes from Dinwiddie each to beginning heart Nic Claxton and reserve heart Day’Ron Sharpe.
Dinwiddie turned the ball over 4 occasions in a below-average efficiency from Brooklyn’s flooring common. Three of his turnovers got here on lob passes. Two of his lob passes had been uncharacteristically excessive, together with one meant for Sharpe that bounced off the highest of the backboard.
Dinwiddie mentioned a few of the onus fell on Claxton to transform alley-oops into factors. On one lob, Dinwiddie went with a working hook shot-looking move over Joel Embiid’s outstretched arms. Claxton bobbled the ball. When he corralled it, he threw a move on to Philadelphia’s Tyrese Maxey — however the NBA formally credited Dinwiddie with the turnover.
“I don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater with one game. I think there are a couple lobs to Nic that I thought he should have converted, and there was one to Day’Ron that completely sold on me, that I just kind of threw too high,” Dinwiddie mentioned earlier than Sunday’s apply at Temple’s Pearson & McGonigle Hall. “So some of that, sometimes it’s gonna be the catch, sometimes the passer. Overall though, I think history tells us that (Claxton is) a phenomenal lab catcher, he obviously just led the league in field goal percentage. He’s extremely efficient on both sides of the ball, he’s a phenomenal player, and I’ve just gotta trust him and he’s gonna make the play. Odds are he’s gonna make the play nine times out of 10.”
Claxton tried to clarify the failed connection forward of Sunday’s apply. He mentioned there wasn’t any miscommunication between him and Dinwiddie on these alley-oop makes an attempt, but in addition mentioned the 2 weren’t totally on the identical web page.
“But I’m not worried about that,” Claxton mentioned. “We really had a good thing going at the end of the regular season, and we’ll get back to that.”
Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn mentioned he’s going to take the percentages of Dinwiddie finishing these lob passes. Brooklyn’s place to begin guard recorded 10 or extra assists 12 occasions for the reason that commerce to the Nets. All 12 of these cases got here after March 1.
Only two gamers are averaging extra assists than Dinwiddie in the course of the tail stretch of the common season: James Harden, who had 13 assists in opposition to the Nets on Saturday; and Hawks star Trae Young, who turned the ball over 5 occasions and recorded eight assists in Atlanta’s series-opening loss to the Boston Celtics.
The Nets belief Dinwiddie and imagine the awry passes had been an outlier.
“I told him I take the odds of him completing those. I’ve seen it done before and I’ve seen him do it at a high level,” Vaughn mentioned. “I said to him during one of the timeouts: ‘The odds are in your favor, and we’re going to connect on a few of these.’ The good thing is our bigs are getting to the rim, it is available. That’s the difference between sometimes scrimmaging during the week and giving your guys off a little time to recover during the week. You just don’t get that timing a bit during the course of a week.”
Dinwiddie wasn’t the Nets’ solely turnover machine on Saturday. Brooklyn turned the ball over 19 occasions as a staff. Mikal Bridges additionally turned the ball over 3 times, and 4 different Nets gamers gave the ball away twice.
“Most of them were live — it was a lot of live-ball turnovers, and those are the worst turnovers to have,” mentioned Claxton, who completed with 4 factors, 10 rebounds and three blocks in Game 1. “You’re better off just throwing the ball out of bounds so you can set up on defense, and they did a really good job of capitalizing off of those, and it gets the crowd involved when they’re hitting threes and getting transition dunks. So we really need to make sure we take care of the ball, especially in a hostile crowd like Philly.”
The Sixers tried 19 extra shot makes an attempt than the Nets — coincidentally, the identical variety of giveaways the Nets had as a staff. They will be unable to win this collection — or win a sport this collection — if they can not deal with the ball, beginning with Dinwiddie, who orchestrates the offense.
“So you see the turnovers, you look at those: You’ve got the Spencer lobs; you’ve got them trying to take a charge. Those are all turnovers, so great. If they come try to take a charge, that means there’s somebody open on the perimeter and we should be getting an open three,” Vaughn mentioned on Sunday. “Those are things that we can take care of for sure. Whether it is we penetrated and a guy shouldn’t be in the corner where he should be, like dead in the corner and having an outlet for that guy, that ends up being a turnover. A lot of things that we can clean up and a little rust that we can knock off from having a week off from basketball. We’ll be ready for game two.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com