GT: Nets vs. Pacers 7:30pm EST 11/1/8/2019. TV: YES Network

[MGrand15]

I really don't get what happened with Rodi to start this season.

In the preseason, Kenny messed with a lineup where DJ/Prince started and another game where Allen/Rodi started. I figured Kenny would rotate the 4 in and out. I figured Prince would be around 26 mpg with Rodi around the same since he could play 3 and 4. First game of the season, Rodi played 7 minutes. After 7 games, he's completely out of the rotation. Only 3 games where he plays more than 12 minutes.

He's clearly been struggling but how did we bail on him so quickly? How did Prince get locked in as a 30+ mpg guy?

I'm not blaming Prince for yesterday but he's been really bad with off the ball defense and his decision making on offense has been poor. The Rodi of last year brought energy, defense, and helped move the ball. I'm not mad at Claxton getting minutes but Rodi can definitely help here.

[DarkXaero]

same knee jerk 14 year old girls who said we sucked last year at 8-18 literally throwing away games in the final seconds to trash teams.

I'm not gonna go post-for-post with you this morning, Prok, but GTFOH with that sexist BS.

Agreed that we can do without the sexist comments like that. We can call out the knee jerking in a better way than that Prok.

It's not the first time he has done it either, its his favorite go-to insult here. Dude sucks.

[Prokorov]

That one was rough overall.

Our bigs got dominated for the second game in a row IMO, Saturday by Carter and last night by Sabonis. I honestly just can't stand DJ's body language and whining while he is in the game. It's hard to watch at times.

Man, I don't know what game guys are watching (or if they are even watching at all?). It is like some lazy narrative to just blame our bigs or pretend they got "dominated"

Sabonis had 16 points on 16 shots. on what planet is that dominating? He scored under his average on awful efficiency and got to the free throw line only 1 time.

His 18 rebounds might look impressive, but it had more to do with us having an awful shooting night. we had a stretch in the second quarter where we missed 20 of 21 shots. that is alot of rebounds for the opposing team.

Turner had 9 points on 11 shot and had just 1 FT attempt.


COMBINED Turner/Sabonis finished with 25 points on 27 shots... and that was with prince/Shumpert defending Turner for the majority of the game.

Allen/Jordan combined for 16 points on 9 shots.

We won the battle up front. We lost because we couldnt score to save our lives in the first half, and the 2 holidays killed us.

Its tough with both kyrie/caris out. we are to heavily reliant on dinwiddie scoring.

Man I understand and respect what you are saying, but you are honestly a stat and analytics guy, I'm not. I'm a basketball guy that watches the actual game and doesn't look at the stats. When I say they got dominated I mean they were getting pushed under the rim again too easily by Sabonis and Turner. As an old school basketball guy put your butt into someone and knock them off the glass. I don't need to look at FGA's, points, rebounds, or anything else to see our bigs getting pushed under the rim without much fight back.

im not one or the other... i watch every game, some multiple times and i look at the stats..

what you are saying happened, simply didnt happen... or your bias coming in made you overly upset the few times a guy did get pushed under the basket. Allen didnt get pushed around. in fact, neither did princ who guarded turner a ton and gave up alot of size

even shumpert didnt get pushed around, he fould turner 2 possessions in a row but he didnt give space.

Dominated is what Kanter/Embiid have done to us in the past

[therealbig3]

Close losses happen for every team, every year. Clinging to the "should have been a win" games at this point is lame. They're losses. We got outplayed. Period.

I agree. But I think as this team gets healthier and more reps together we'll be much better. It's too early for people to panic.

If we were 1-12, I'd understand. But at 5-8 I'm thinking that we can clean up some things and get healthier, which makes the team better by default because we're not relying on guys who have no business being on the floor or aren't prepared for NBA minutes to play significant minutes.

I love what I'm seeing from Jarrett Allen right now. He's toughening up, being mindful of his fouls, hitting the glass and going up strong regardless of who's there. Nic Claxton is an exciting prospect. I really like what I saw defensively from Shump yesterday and I like the idea of him being in the rotation when we get Irving and LeVert back to mainly focus on defense and taking open three pointers (keep it simple).

Prince needs to be pulled aside and have his role simplified to just shooting threes, rebounding, and defending. He was a disaster last night. DJ needs to give us more consistency or maybe he needs his minutes to be managed so that we can get a better effort from him, I watched him stand flat footed as an offense rebound went right by him, that's either fatigue or laziness but we need better.

Kenny needs to get in the office with his coaching staff and dissect what is happening right now. He's got to call guys out on the ball sticking and he needs to change how we defend the pick and roll. I want to see more trapping and less allowing ball handlers dribble into easy 15 foot jumpers.

I'm not going to sit here and complain about Theo or Musa. Neither of them should be playing and frankly I would prefer to see Nwaba and Kurucs get into the mix again. This team desperately needs a reliable emergency ball handler, having two of our top ball handlers out at the same time is a backbreaker that no amount of coaching can fix.

I think the problem people are having is that there are systemic issues that won't be solved with better team chemistry and Kyrie coming back healthy. So hand-waving away obvious problems with the team that's leading to losses and won't be addressed without major roster changes and just saying "we're fine" is a little frustrating.

-we have low IQ players who are getting a lot of minutes, so I don't see us getting all that much better in terms of bad TOs and overall decision-making, that's just kind of who we are...however, I don't see our offense being a problem this year, I actually think that overall, we're going to be a very good offensive team, with multiple ball handlers capable of breaking down a defense, with willing passers and good shooters, as well as big men that can finish around the rim...we'll be ok in that department, especially with Irving...but we're still going to have those games where we're turning the ball over a lot and we have guys taking some reckless shots that might as well be turnovers, because that's kind of who they are
-the major issue is going to be defense, where we have just bad defenders all over the place...the only players I would say are definitely a plus on defense would be Temple, Allen, and now Shumpert. Everyone else is either average at best or a liability at worst. No amount of coaching can really fix having poor defensive personnel. Yeah, maybe we can play more Nwaba...feel like we're overrating him, he's not some defensive savant who's going to fix our issues, I wasn't overly impressed with his defense when he was playing more tbh. Chemistry and health isn't going to address this, not until next year anyway when we get Durant back and he should at least be a big improvement over Prince in the starting lineup. I mean, we just got lit up by the Holiday bros. They straight up looked like All-Stars against us. They're not even supposed to be starting! They only started because Oladipo and Brogdon (their All-Star backcourt) were hurt. Which is another reason why I don't want to give this team that much of a pass for getting destroyed by Indiana. They didn't have their starting guards either. They still dominated.
-Effort. We have players on this team that play some lazy basketball. Deandre has kind of become the poster child for that this year, but he's not the only one. Kyrie gets lazy. Prince gets lazy. Dinwiddie gets lazy. Even Levert gets lazy. The only rotation players that really give it their all on a consistent basis are Allen and Harris. Claxton and Musa give great effort when they're out there too, but they only just started getting consistent minutes, and they're still so raw that we can't even play them that much. That, in addition to our bad defense, is why we give up so many leads. It becomes a chuck fest on offense and we go away from what worked for us, and obviously we can't stop opposing teams from doing whatever they want offensively.

IDK, Kyrie + Levert + chemistry doesn't change any of those things. It'll lead to some more wins, but it's not going to change who we are fundamentally unless we make a major roster change, so I'm not seeing some massive improvement coming. We'll be a .500-ish team in the lower half of the playoff bracket, and I don't see us getting past the 1st round.

[MrDollarBills]

Close losses happen for every team, every year. Clinging to the "should have been a win" games at this point is lame. They're losses. We got outplayed. Period.

I agree. But I think as this team gets healthier and more reps together we'll be much better. It's too early for people to panic.

If we were 1-12, I'd understand. But at 5-8 I'm thinking that we can clean up some things and get healthier, which makes the team better by default because we're not relying on guys who have no business being on the floor or aren't prepared for NBA minutes to play significant minutes.

I love what I'm seeing from Jarrett Allen right now. He's toughening up, being mindful of his fouls, hitting the glass and going up strong regardless of who's there. Nic Claxton is an exciting prospect. I really like what I saw defensively from Shump yesterday and I like the idea of him being in the rotation when we get Irving and LeVert back to mainly focus on defense and taking open three pointers (keep it simple).

Prince needs to be pulled aside and have his role simplified to just shooting threes, rebounding, and defending. He was a disaster last night. DJ needs to give us more consistency or maybe he needs his minutes to be managed so that we can get a better effort from him, I watched him stand flat footed as an offense rebound went right by him, that's either fatigue or laziness but we need better.

Kenny needs to get in the office with his coaching staff and dissect what is happening right now. He's got to call guys out on the ball sticking and he needs to change how we defend the pick and roll. I want to see more trapping and less allowing ball handlers dribble into easy 15 foot jumpers.

I'm not going to sit here and complain about Theo or Musa. Neither of them should be playing and frankly I would prefer to see Nwaba and Kurucs get into the mix again. This team desperately needs a reliable emergency ball handler, having two of our top ball handlers out at the same time is a backbreaker that no amount of coaching can fix.

I think the problem people are having is that there are systemic issues that won't be solved with better team chemistry and Kyrie coming back healthy. So hand-waving away obvious problems with the team that's leading to losses and won't be addressed without major roster changes and just saying "we're fine" is a little frustrating.

-we have low IQ players who are getting a lot of minutes, so I don't see us getting all that much better in terms of bad TOs and overall decision-making, that's just kind of who we are...however, I don't see our offense being a problem this year, I actually think that overall, we're going to be a very good offensive team, with multiple ball handlers capable of breaking down a defense, with willing passers and good shooters, as well as big men that can finish around the rim...we'll be ok in that department, especially with Irving...but we're still going to have those games where we're turning the ball over a lot and we have guys taking some reckless shots that might as well be turnovers, because that's kind of who they are
-the major issue is going to be defense, where we have just bad defenders all over the place...the only players I would say are definitely a plus on defense would be Temple, Allen, and now Shumpert. Everyone else is either average at best or a liability at worst. No amount of coaching can really fix having poor defensive personnel. Yeah, maybe we can play more Nwaba...feel like we're overrating him, he's not some defensive savant who's going to fix our issues, I wasn't overly impressed with his defense when he was playing more tbh. Chemistry and health isn't going to address this, not until next year anyway when we get Durant back and he should at least be a big improvement over Prince in the starting lineup. I mean, we just got lit up by the Holiday bros. They straight up looked like All-Stars against us. They're not even supposed to be starting! They only started because Oladipo and Brogdon (their All-Star backcourt) were hurt. Which is another reason why I don't want to give this team that much of a pass for getting destroyed by Indiana. They didn't have their starting guards either. They still dominated.
-Effort. We have players on this team that play some lazy basketball. Deandre has kind of become the poster child for that this year, but he's not the only one. Kyrie gets lazy. Prince gets lazy. Dinwiddie gets lazy. Even Levert gets lazy. The only rotation players that really give it their all on a consistent basis are Allen and Harris. Claxton and Musa give great effort when they're out there too, but they only just started getting consistent minutes, and they're still so raw that we can't even play them that much. That, in addition to our bad defense, is why we give up so many leads. It becomes a chuck fest on offense and we go away from what worked for us, and obviously we can't stop opposing teams from doing whatever they want offensively.

IDK, Kyrie + Levert + chemistry doesn't change any of those things. It'll lead to some more wins, but it's not going to change who we are fundamentally unless we make a major roster change, so I'm not seeing some massive improvement coming. We'll be a .500-ish team in the lower half of the playoff bracket, and I don't see us getting past the 1st round.

We should look at the shot chart to see where the damage was being done because at least from my eyeball test, we are giving up open mid range J's to ball handlers off of picks and that is absolutely killing us. It's been the same story year after year. I think this is more systemic than we want to admit.

You're asking a lot out of guys to constantly fight through screens. we need to start mixing it up with traps and blowing up the PnR like teams do to us. I never see us trap ball handlers and force them into tough positions. All we do is allow the perimeter defender to be screened, force the guy who is screened to go around the screener while the big man drops back to the paint to watch a guard take jump shots from the foul line. That is 100% on the coaching staff.

I'm not going to single guys out and call them lazy when we're seeing problems that were also problems from previous years.

I don't think Irving is lazy at all. He's not a great defender but I've seen him hustle and be active as well.

I'm not waving off problems, nor am I in the mood to scapegoat. I think the Nets need to evaluate their defensive philosophy which imo is playing to the analytics of the mid range jumper is an inefficient shot, which is a highly debatable approach to playing defense if you're just giving guys uncontested look inside the arc.

[Papi_swav]

Guys come on with the paragraphs lol I'm not reading all that

[gigantes]

^ Great discussion. ^

[jbeachboy]

kurucs looked hesitant and lost out there, i dont blame kenny for going with claxton. maybe the trial is affecting his play but he belongs in G league for now.