The Brooklyn Nets awful defense, explained

Raise your hand if you had the Brooklyn Nets starting 1-5 on your NBA bingo card.

Through six games, the Nets have posted a porous defensive rating of 122.4, dead last in the league. For reference, the Portland Trail Blazers were dead last a season ago with a number of 116.9. That’s 5.5 points per 100 possessions worse than last year’s league-worst mark.

It’s too early to be calling this a historically-poor defense because, well, we aren’t even ten games into a long season. However, sounding the alarm seems justified based on the film and the overall carelessness going into that side of the floor. Saturday’s performance against the Indiana Pacers moved things from “rough start” to “legitimate concern.”

The relationship between scheme and personnel is symbiotic. At the outset of the season, the coaching staff takes a look at their roster and determines what strategies, in theory, work best for their guys. The players are then tasked with executing it, and if they don’t do it effectively, the staff can go back and adjust. As the lineups change and roles grow or shrink throughout the year, the gameplans must also be flexible.

So far, the issues in Brooklyn appear to be on both parts of the feedback loop. There is a complete lack of detail that goes into the consistency with which the Nets must guard common and complex NBA actions (schematic breakdowns). There’s also a shortage of rim protection on the roster that is clearly evident no matter who they face or what coverage they deploy (personnel issues).

The lack of rim protection is underscored by the amount of easy buckets they give up. Simple back cuts when the Nets try to top-lock (overplay the top side of a cutter) result in easy baskets, as do simple give-and-go passes.

Cutters have been a major issue for the Nets thus far. Brooklyn also switches by design, trying to eliminate advantages gained at the point of attack and daring teams to beat them one-on-one. Because the team is low on the personnel to make such a scheme work, everyone off-ball starts to ball-watch and think that, at some point, they’ll be forced to help on the play.

The result: a lot of back cuts, with particularly egregious moments coming from stars Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, and Ben Simmons.

It may be unfair to still call Simmons a star. He’s clearly not himself at this juncture. He’s not aggressive on either end, shying away from physicality and lacking decisiveness. Even with all the offensive woes over the last several years, the defense was what remained consistent. Now he’s getting blown by and out-gunned, providing no rim protection from behind and staying back in the paint instead of pressing into passing lanes like he did so successfully in Philadelphia. Perhaps it’s the lack of a security blanket like Joel Embiid behind him or something physical, but either way, Simmons doesn’t look like the defender of old.

Simmons is, in theory, one of the team’s best three individual defenders. He will be counted upon to either guard star players off switches or provide help when other guys like Kyrie, Patty Mills, Joe Harris and Seth Curry get stuck in a nightmare matchup.

Both Simmons and Irving have been, in particular, demonstrating matador-like tendencies when guarding in isolation.

The lack of rim protection on the roster takes away their security blanket, and these scoring attempts become just so easy for guys like Luka Doncic and Pascal Siakam. Again, switching is meant to encourage tough one-on-one shots for stars. These don’t even register on the degree of difficulty scale.

Schematically, the coaching staff can adjust and send double-teams at opposing stars. Get the ball out of their hands and make someone else win the possession. The only issue is that the Nets have been incredibly indecisive about whether to go on these doubles or stay home with their man. Helpers often commit half-way, then stand in the lane guarding nobody and confusing their teammates as to what’s actually happening.

The result is often easy layups or dunks.

Simmons on the first clip and Claxton on the second leave their help defenders out to dry. If they’re going to trap, they have to trap aggressively and decisively. While the point of attack is porous, the lack of organized help has not been there to compensate.

The second common area the Nets have struggled with are ball screens. Yes, the good, old fashioned, unbelievably common pick-and-roll. Most teams will defend screens and handoffs the same way and focus most on the guys guarding the screener and the handler. The goal, no matter what the coverage is, remains the same throughout: don’t give up the rim!

Through only six games, there have been far too many instances where simple ball screens or handoffs are leading to wide open layups with zero resistance from the defense.

Against the Memphis Grizzlies, Brooklyn’s defense in ball screens was abysmal. It was the wrong time for the breakdowns to happen, as Ja Morant is an MVP-caliber scorer in the pick-and-roll. The issues weren’t with Morant simply outplaying them, though. The Nets were completely disorganized against both Morant and Desmond Bane.

Watch the clips below and try to figure out what the plan is. Are they switching? Are they showing higher than typical Drop coverage? Should they force the ball to or away from the screen?

There’s just no consistency, making it hard to diagnose both what they’re trying to accomplish and who is at fault for the breakdowns.

For most of the game and the season, they’ve been in Drop coverage when bigs like Day’Ron Sharpe or Nic Claxton are involved. The idea behind Drop coverage is to funnel the ball toward the rim-bound big, forcing either a floater or a mid-range jumper. That way, the big can take away the roll man and the driving layup at the same time. That’s a lot of pressure to put on two inexperienced bigs in this league.

Drop coverage is about playing two-on-two in the middle of the floor, so help defenders don’t commit to helping on the drive and stay home on shooters. But the Nets have not been disciplined enough to stay home on shooters, often over-helping to create easy kick-out opportunities. Kessler Edwards got caught here against the Milwaukee Bucks:

It’s hard to play the blame game here because, frankly, everyone is to blame. Brooklyn’s bigs haven’t gotten the job done in Drop coverage; Edwards helping on the drive when nobody else is getting the job done is human nature. The schemes don’t seem to be working for their personnel. There’s enough culpability to go around.

Perhaps the biggest disaster zone on their defensive coverages have come with guard-to-guard pick-and-pop actions. While these often will result in switches (which the Nets often welcome by design), quick-hitting pick-and-pops that are slipped are a nightmare to defend. They’re especially tough when set by a shooting threat, one that the Nets don’t want to give any breathing room.

Again, it’s the lack of consistency that’s appalling here. Guards on the ball are flat-footed and often pointing for a switch, only for it not to come (see Mills, Patty in the second clip). Sometimes they zone-up and expect a rotation or triple switch. Sometimes they both show and leave the shooter open. Flipping the screen once, as the Dallas Mavericks did to them, made it nearly impossible for the Nets to navigate on the fly, and they got torched.

A standard way of helping through the action is by including the “third man in”, as it’s known — a designed stunt from the next-highest defender to take away the pick-and-pop. If the ball goes to the popper after his screen, the closest help defender is supposed to stunt to take it away. For reference, here’s an old breakdown looking at the defensive tactic of that stunt, which is a pretty universal concept in the NBA.

When breakdowns on those guard-to-guard actions happen, the rest of the defense needs to be alert to their role. Dallas went at Brooklyn time and time again with these high screens guard-to-guard, hoping to get a switch for Doncic or create an open shot for the screener. In overtime of that game, it was their bread-and-butter for attacking Brooklyn. Yet there was still no adjustment from the Nets, and a disappointing lack of engagement from Kyrie late-game.

He missed a crucial stunt that led to a Reggie Bullock 3-pointer, pushing the Mavs lead to seven, from which the Nets could never recover.

In the moments where they switch, they aren’t good at switching or guarding in isolation. In the moments when they drop back, they aren’t impacting drivers or staying disciplined off-ball. Helpers are falling asleep and leaving the rim wide open far too often. There’s no rim protection, not enough pressure on the ball, and no consistency in their coverages. And the deficiencies discussed above aren’t the only ones. Bigs are getting blown by one-on-one. Screen-the-screener actions are resulting in breakdowns that lead to open dunks.

To be blunt, it’s a mess.

This week is a crucial one for the Nets to fix the issues they can control. They get a rematch with the Pacers on Halloween, followed by consecutive games with the Chicago Bulls, Washington Wizards, and Charlotte Hornets. After playing the Bulls, 10 of their next 12 come on the road, including a West Coast road trip that takes them through Thanksgiving.

November has a chance to be a brutal month if they cannot get on the right track quickly.