Nets' patient defensive approach paying off during recent hot stretch
Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn directs his players against the Washington Wizards in the second half of an NBA basketball game at Barclays Center on Friday, Dec. 8, 2023. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
DENVER — Patience and time. That’s how the Nets treated their process on defense. Even after giving up 147 points to the Hawks three weeks ago, the thought was “wait and see.”
Flash forward to Wednesday night. The Nets held the Suns to only 24 fourth-quarter points in a 116-112 win on the road. It came two games after holding the lowly Wizards to six three-pointers in a 124-97 home win.
During this 7-2 stretch entering Thursday’s game at the Nuggets, the Nets’ defense has figured something out. There’s better communication and more intention with their length to cause disruption and force missed shots.
For the first time this season, the Nets have resembled the defense-first unit coach Jacque Vaughn wanted them to be. They’re looking like a physical group that can change coverages on the fly depending on situations or personnel.
“I think we’ve honed in a little bit in the direction that we want to play, the style that we want to play defensively and now [are] putting those pieces together,” Vaughn said. “We start pretty small and we don’t start our best defensive lineup, and so we’ve had to figure out ways to be defensive-minded at the beginning of a game.”
Over the last nine games, the Nets are fifth in opponent field- goal percentage and opponent points per game, and eighth in defensive efficiency. They’re still not forcing turnovers at a high clip but, as one of the league’s best rebounding teams, they’re making up for it by limiting multiple possessions.
What they’ve been able to do is switch easily from man-to-man, to zone, to drop coverage — something Vaughn instituted more this preseason. At times, they’ve played a full-court trap on several possessions.
It’s easier when players like Mikal Bridges help set a tone and Royce O’Neale and Cam Johnson can guard multiple positions on the perimeter. But, after 23 games, there’s finally a growing comfort in knowing who has what responsibility and how to rotate better to help out a teammate.
“It’s just trust. Trust in the coaches, trust in the players,” Nic Claxton said. “It’s a different scheme for everybody defensively. Most of us haven’t guarded the way that we are now. It’s pretty aggressive. And we’re doing that, we’re getting our hands in passing lanes and rebounding really well.”
It all relates to Vaughn’s principle of keeping teams away from the rim and settling for jumpers. With Claxton anchoring the middle, the Nets are seventh in opposing field-goal percentage at the rim since this stretch began after losing to the Hawks on Nov. 22, per Cleaning the Glass.
Things still aren’t perfect. The Nets are still not forcing enough turnovers and are susceptible to teams catching fire beyond the arc. The Kings showed that Monday by making a franchise-record 25 three-pointers.
There’s also the caveat that all but two of the Nets’ seven wins in this stretch have come against sub-.500 teams. But what better way to fix a defense than to do it against opponents that were overmatched?
The Nets had a feeling their defense would come around and, even with Dennis Smith Jr. and Ben Simmons, two of their top defenders, hurt, it’s starting to round into better shape.
“It’s a great challenge to our group, just having multiple defenses throughout the course of the night to be able to turn to,” Vaughn said. “And I think our bigs are growing in that area, of being able to switch from time to time [in] our defenses . . . You’ll see us play a lot different and that’s going to pay dividends for us down the line, just being able to play different teams different ways.”
Evan Barnes covers the Giants for Newsday. He previously covered the Brooklyn Nets, Memphis football and the Memphis Grizzlies and also covered prep sports in Los Angeles.
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