Thanks to injuries to Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, the focus for the Brooklyn Nets is next year, but which members of the supporting cast will be able to help a contender at that point?
Even considering they knew they would not have Kevin Durant all year, this season has not gone as planned for the Brooklyn Nets. Kyrie Irving has been in and out of the lineup all season due to various injury issues, and the Nets have only occasionally succeeded with him on the floor anyway. The Nets look like they’ll make the playoffs, but largely only because the rest of the East is so bad.
But that does not mean all is lost. Just as was the case with the Golden State Warriors, who we wrote about earlier this week, the Nets have gotten some valuable information about the other guys on their team while their stars were sitting on the sideline.
Let’s check in and see how they’ve done.
Spencer Dinwiddie
Spencer Dinwiddie has been Brooklyn’s best and most consistent player this season. He has functioned in largely the same role as he did a year ago — both the backup and replacement for the team’s primary point guard.
Given our recency biases, it’s easy to forget that there was a stretch of last season when it looked like Dinwiddie, not D’Angelo Russell, was Brooklyn’s best player. After the early-season injury to Caris LeVert, it was Dinwiddie who took the reins and kept the Nets afloat. Only after Dinwiddie also suffered an injury did Russell really begin to emerge. Pretty much the same thing happened this year, only it was Dinwiddie who was last to take the reins. Irving got injured, then LeVert took on a larger role. Then LeVert got injured, and Dinwiddie kept the team afloat once again.
He’s still better on the ball than off it, but despite the dip in his outside shooting numbers, he often appears more comfortable playing off another guard than LeVert usually does. Dinwiddie’s size and strength allow him to get to his spots on the floor with regularity and to be paired with just about any backcourt partner on the defensive end. He could stand to be a bit more active in passing lanes and in disrupting opponent ventures into the paint off the dribble, but he’s not a turnstile, and that’s about all that’s expected of most lead guards these days.
Dinwiddie’s relatively inefficient shooting means he’s not necessarily the kind of guy you can depend on to anchor a top-10 offense, but he is a starter-quality player who is both willing and comfortable with coming off the bench if there’s a more talented option ahead of him. That’s a great guy to have on your team.
Caris LeVert and Joe Harris
LeVert has, as usual, been in and out of the lineup due to injuries. He struggled pretty badly to fit in alongside both Irving and Dinwiddie early in the season, but has been much better since his return from injury — which, not coincidentally, has meant playing with only one of those two other ball-dominant guards. LeVert is the better 3-point shooter than Dinwiddie (he’s at 39 percent this year) but nonetheless often seems less comfortable off the ball than his counterpart.
Of major concern considering his injury history is another dramatic drop in his 2-point field goal percentage: LeVert made 57.1 percent of his 2s as a rookie, dipped to 48.0 and 48.3 percent the past two years, and has plummeted down to just 40.4 percent this season. A far greater share of his shots have come from the back half of the paint and the mid-range areas than they did before, which coupled with various lower-body injuries, raises concerns about his explosiveness holding up over the long-term.
Still, he is a dynamite scorer who can get going in a variety of ways and carry a team for a quarter or more at a time. If ever gets more comfortable away from the ball, he should make for an excellent fit between Irving and Durant on the perimeter.
Joe Harris remains Joe Harris. He is one of the premier outside snipers in the league, a dependable shooter who can let it fly from a standstill, jetting around screens, as a trailer in transition or occasionally off the dribble. This is his third consecutive season knocking down at least 40 percent of his shots from beyond the arc, and we should not expect him to dip below that number unless and until he actually does.
Jarrett Allen and DeAndre Jordan
If you’re ever thinking about grabbing an uncontested rebound in the general vicinity of DeAndre Jordan, don’t. He will come pretty damn close to elbowing you out of the way in order to grab it himself. Jordan’s rebound rates dramatically overstate his impact on the game, and his declining free-throw, steal and usage rates are probably better indicators of his activity level on the court at this time.
He has been a liability in space on defense almost all of the time, with opponents relentlessly attacking him in pick-and-rolls. (Opponents have run 48.7 pick-and-rolls per 100 possessions with Jordan’s man as the screener, the seventh-highest mark among the 77 big men who have defended the screener at least 500 times this season.) Jordan remains a good rim protector when he is actually in position to protect the rim, but he also remains too prone to chasing blocks and leaving his man free to roll to the basket.
Jarrett Allen‘s numbers look similar to Jordan’s, but his activity level has been significantly higher, and he’s been a more attentive help defender on opponent drives. He’s rounding into the type of player Jordan was before Doc Rivers inception-ed him into actually becoming a truly top-notch defender for a few years. If he can show a little bit more skill diversity as a roll man, spraying the ball to shooters off the catch or making a high-low dish a bit more often, then he would be an even more effective player.
The other guys
After briefly perking back up in January, Taurean Prince has cratered again this month. His shot is nowhere to be found. He works well as an energy guy and has the size and length to defend multiple positions, but there’s a consistency that’s missing there. He seems like the kind of combo forward who should be excelling in today’s NBA, but hasn’t quite put it all together yet. Perhaps if the shot starts falling with more regularity, he can make more of an impact.
Rodions Kurucs has been surpassed in the rotation by several of the players the Nets brought in this season, including Prince, Wilson Chandler and more recently, Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot. He still has an intriguing offensive skill-set, but that hasn’t been enough to distinguish himself this season. Similarly not distinguishing himself is Dzanan Musa, Brooklyn’s first-rounder from 2018. He’s barely been a factor in his two NBA seasons.
Chandler and Garrett Temple have shot terribly this season, but they have each provided positional versatility on defense and pertinent skills on offense (ball-handling from Temple and late-clock creation from Chandler). They’re not expected to play huge roles anyway, and if the Nets brought them back to play 15-ish minutes a night when they expect to be a much better team next year, they could be counted on to do an admirable job.
Rookie big man Nicolas Claxton hasn’t played very often, but I like what I’ve seen of him in the little time he’s been on the floor. He’s athletic, he’s a lefty, he has great hair. There’s plenty of time for him to develop and eventually become Allen’s primary backup.