What the Nets can learn as they wait for Kevin Durant

Last season, the Brooklyn Nets were 19-21 after 40 games. This year they’re 18-22, having dropped nine of their last 11 while ranked 24th in offensive rating. Brooklyn’s schedule is currently a torture rack, with upcoming games against the Milwaukee Bucks, Philadelphia 76ers, and Los Angeles Lakers; after Wednesday’s nationally-televised loss against the Joel Embiid-less Sixers, Kyrie Irving threw half his teammates under the bus by publicly confirming the shortcomings he believes they have.

Whether Irving is right or wrong is besides the point, but also not significant enough to fuss over. Right now the Nets are lurching through a storm that isn’t strong enough to destabilize their long-term vision. Injuries—and the accompanying stringent approach towards recovery/prevention that falls somewhere between extreme caution and short-term apathy—are a huge reason why this team hasn’t taken any meaningful strides during their initial go around as a franchise that matters.

Even though Spencer Dinwiddie, Joe Harris, Jarrett Allen, and Taurean Prince (their 218-pound power forward in just about every lineup that plays meaningful minutes) have yet to miss any time, Irving and Caris LeVert have sat through a combined 51 games. Throw in Wilson Chandler’s 25-game suspension and Kevin Durant’s expected absence, and what you have is a rotation that’s had to patch itself together with the likes of Dzanan Musa, Theo Pinson, Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot, and Nicolas Claxton at various points over the past few months.

This isn’t ideal, but also far from an outright disaster. Brooklyn’s future was always going to be more compelling than its past or present. Right now so much of the organization’s relevance is tied into the anticipatory fulfillment of goals that have rarely, if ever, felt realistic.

With no way to simulate the next nine months and fast-forward into a future where Irving and Durant are tyrannizing the Eastern Conference, stakes for this season have always been a bit unconventional: Wins and losses matter, but only as an extension of how it affects their collective development into a group that can ultimately have all its problems solved by plopping one of the most carnivorous scorers who ever lived into their starting lineup.

Until then, pretty much everybody is healthy, gifting Brooklyn’s coaching staff and front office with an opportunity to finally evaluate what it has, how it should play, and who works in which lineups. The main questions surround their three best players: Irving, LeVert, and Dinwiddie.

The first half-season of Brooklyn’s Irving-Durant era was plagued by interruption and dominated by Dinwiddie, the cunning overseer of an offense that relied on him to manufacture quality looks, get to the free-throw line, and attack the basket more often than basically anybody else in the entire NBA. (Since Dinwiddie became a starter the only player averaging more drives is Trae Young, who does it 0.1 times more per game.)

During Irving’s 26-game absence, Dinwiddie turned Barclays Center into his own canvas for self-elevation; as a starter, he’s logging 22 points and 7.1 assists with the same usage rate as Bradley Beal. No player has done a better job taking advantage of an unforeseen opportunity than he has. But now that Irving and LeVert are back, the Nets are faced with a good problem: How do you maximize the strengths of three All-Star-caliber players without diluting what makes each one so potent?

Flipping the script from how things looked on opening night, LeVert is now coming off the bench while Dinwiddie starts beside Irving. But the groupings are fluid, with some lineups featuring all three, most having at least two, and some that let one cook by himself. The earliest returns are mixed: a little your-turn-my-turn motionlessness with a pinch of more cohesive actions that don’t bail the defense out sprinkled on top.

Assuming a decent stretch of good health is in Brooklyn’s future, the chance to make it work with all three could be instrumental as they evaluate what’s best once this season is over. In a whopping 38 minutes, units featuring Irving, LeVert, and Dinwiddie are posting a 124.7 offensive rating, sizzling through the trepidation associated with too many ball-dominant scorers trying to eat at the same time.

Here’s what Kenny Atkinson had to say about the trio after Wednesday’s loss against the Sixers: “It wasn’t jelling. I have to admit that. ... We’re just going to have to find what that combination looks like. I think it’ll be game-to-game. It’s a feel...I thought they were good the night before. Tonight it wasn’t perfect. That’s something we have to look at the next two days.”

Remove LeVert from the equation and Brooklyn has been pretty good in 200 minutes with just Irving and Dinwiddie, stiff-arming a noticeable size disadvantage on the glass to outscore opponents by 6.1 points per 100 possessions. Assuming the Nets don’t sell high on Dinwiddie before this year’s trade deadline (a deal centered around Orlando’s Aaron Gordon would make sense for everyone involved) this trio has a chance to create serious matchup problems for almost everyone they play.

The predictable concern is that they’ll revert into formulaic hero ball—understandable whenever Irving is part of the equation—instead of leveraging each other’s gravity in selfless ways. The Nets can probably win enough games to make the playoffs with a steady diet of isolation basketball, but the latter mindset is necessary for actual championship contention.

It’s never too early to build those habits, and the Nets have figured out ways to use Dinwiddie off the ball, curling him around stagger screens for catch-and-shoot threes he should be able to hit at a respectable clip.

Picking up where that last play left off is this iteration, where Dinwiddie starts in the corner, but instead of coming off Prince’s second screen he drifts into the paint. Several options that involve everyone on the floor then take shape, beginning with an Irving-Prince pick-and-roll that’s designed to generate a corner three for Dinwiddie, who sprints there off Allen’s screen. When the Jazz take that away, Irving pitches the ball back to Prince, who gets his shoulders by Royce O’Neale while Allen rumbles in as a lob threat.

Both these plays came with LeVert on the bench, but when you watch Brooklyn play with all three out there it’s unnerving, in a positive way. No lead is safe. And if they need even more punch, replacing Prince with Harris creates an intriguing five-man lineup that Atkinson should close a bunch of games with in the future.

Very few teams can put the type of pressure on a defense that Brooklyn can. Here they are at their best, in a dueling banjos sequence where two pick-and-rolls lead to an open three.

If a defense must be locked in on a string to stop just one Irving pick-and-roll, imagine how mentally exhausting it would be to exhale after he kicks it back to Allen, only to realize another pick-and-roll, with another excellent attacker, is about to happen.

Once minutes restrictions are lifted it’s hard to envision a meaningful possession being played with only one of these three in the game. From here on out, it’ll be fascinating to see how they co-exist. Every team in the league that’s interested in prying LeVert or Dinwiddie away will be paying close attention, but so much of Brooklyn’s analysis is engaged with a hypothetical projection into the future.

Everything changes next year, when (at least) 18 shots per game will suddenly get sucked up by a healthy Durant. It’s here where talent, as overwhelming as it’d be, isn’t enough, particularly when it’s not possible to deploy in seamlessly complementary ways.

Dinwiddie is on the best non-rookie scale/max contract in the league, but he can become a free agent in 2021, where his market value will exceed what Brooklyn should be willing to pay. On the court, his most meaningful contributions are already provided by Irving, which would theoretically render him a spot-up threat (who’s only made 32.5 percent of his open/wide-open threes this season) in spots that really matter. Championship teams need players who bloom in roles that support the team’s true star(s), and it’s just hard to picture a lineup with KD, Kyrie, Dinwiddie, LeVert, and a center having the hierarchical structure—let alone two-way fortitude—that’s necessary when battling through a tough playoff series.

As of now, the Nets are all but locked into a seven or eight seed, where they’ll likely face off against the Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics, or Miami Heat. They won’t be favored in any of those series, but they have half a season to embrace a less self-serving system that can crack the glass ceiling that hangs overhead. An upset would be nice, but establishing trust and building chemistry should be the greater priority.

How that all unfolds over the next few weeks and months will really matter for a team that has inevitable championship aspirations. Until Durant returns, Brooklyn is stuck in somewhat of a basketball purgatory, where self-discovery matters more than anything else. It’s weird. It’s frustrating. It’s what they signed up for.