Jan 12, 2023; Brooklyn, New York, USA; Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving (11) reacts after committing a foul in the fourth quarter against the Boston Celtics at Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports
NBA: Boston Celtics at Brooklyn Nets
A Durant-less-Nets offense collapsed late in their 109-98 loss to the Boston Celtics Thursday night.
With the daunting news of Kevin Durant missing at least a couple of weeks with an MCL sprain, the main concern was where the Nets offense would move without him. Since the start of December, the Brooklyn Nets were tied with the Nuggets for the league’s highest offensive rating at a whopping 120.6. One thing both those teams have in common over the stretch is that they’re being led by one of the greatest offensive players of all time at the peak of their power. Such can no longer be said about the Nets with Durant down.
“Each and everyone of us. Every night,” Kyrie Irving said when asked where Durant’s scoring would be distributed. “It’s a collective effort.”
Obviously it’s not as simple as the Nets now scoring 30 less points per game with Durant gone, but those 30 points are going to have to come from somewhere. The issue is the “collective effort” Irving mentioned didn’t perform in their debut performance without their star scorer.
Ben Simmons will be the first person fingers amongst fans will be pointed at. His timidness with scoring the ball has been nothing new this season, but in a game where Kyrie is going to need scorers to step up, Big Ben no-showed again. Another donut in the scoring column, Ben Simmons went 0-for-3 from the field, marking his second scoreless game of the season. The lack of aggression got the point of boos coming from the Barclays Center crowd when in the fourth quarter Simmons elected to pass up a layup attempt he’s more than capable of finishing to a Claxton dish-out that went out of bounds.
“I wouldn’t call it pressure, it’s just something I need to do,” Ben Simmons said after the game when asked about if he felt pressure scoring more with Durant off the floor.
The collective effort that did stand out on the positive end was by way of Joe Harris and TJ Warren. Of the 8 times Joe Harris has attempted 7 or more three-pointers this season, this was just the second game he shot above 29% from deep. The Nets have not gotten as much from Harris as they wanted as he’s rehabbed from a season-ending injury months ago, but glimpses like this can strike optimism for Brooklyn is a period without Durant and even more so beyond that.
Warren had himself a night leading all bench players in scoring with 20. He’s one of those players whose effectiveness grows when he gets the ball to work on getting to his spots, and there’s a lot more ball to go around now with KD out. If scoring starts to deplete from the starting unit, he can easily be shifted with Royce O’Neale coming in off the bench. For the time being, Warren is just the offensive engine the Nets need when Kyrie is off.
Sustaining the league’s best offense over the last month-and-a-half stretch without your team’s best offensive player would be impossible, but getting 75% of that is the goal in the next couple of weeks. In lineups without Kevin Durant on the floor this season, the Nets posted a sad 108.1 offensive rating which would be dead last in the league by a wide margin. In tonight’s double digit loss to the Celtics, the Nets offense took an even bigger dip to just 105.4.
If tonight’s game was a litmus test for what the Nets offense could look like for at least two weeks without Kevin Durant hitting the hardwood, it’s been a failure. It helps that Brooklyn was facing a Boston team that was one Jay down, but taking down the best team in the league, especially a top 10 defense with your offense in question, would have been as big of an achievement a team could accomplish in a single game in January. A dead-in-the-water offense to close out the game prevented the Nets from completing this, however.
The Nets have dropped 9 straight to the Celtics (regular season and playoffs combined) dating back to last season, so maybe this is all fodder and Boston just has Brooklyn’s number.
