It’s Boston day! Ben Simmons’ return to Philadelphia was a dud for a few reasons, including the best Sixers’ absences draining some juice from the match-up. The schedule-makers once again exiled Brooklyn from the prized island of Christmas Day, where they existed for so long. The Nets don’t even have a game on the NBA’s B-holiday slate, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
So when Brooklyn, in the midst of an NBA-high four-game win-streak, plays host to the Boston Celtics on Sunday evening, it may wind up being the biggest regular season game of the year. It certainly is to this point, even with the lack of a national broadcast. Let’s get right to it.
Where to follow the game
As aforementioned, it’s all local. YES Network and the YES App have the telecast, and WFAN-FM has the radio call. We have the rare 6:00 p.m. ET scheduled start-time.
Injuries
Two of Brooklyn’s three, tall lefties are out once again. Ben Simmons and Yuta Watanabe will be missing their third and eight consecutive games, respectively. Edmond Sumner is also out for Sunday’s contest with a glute injury, sustained during a hard fall in Friday’s game vs. Toronto. The Nets recalled both Kessler Edwards and Day’Ron Sharpe Sunday from the Long Island Nets.
On the Boston side Robert Williams III still hasn’t played this season as he rehabs a surgically repaired knee; that will continue vs. Brooklyn. Marcus Smart, the reigning DPOY, is questionable with a left hip contusion.
The game
I skipped over the mini-recap of that Friday win vs. Toronto, but there are still valuable lessons to be learned for Brooklyn, if they want to pull off the upset victory over the league’s best team. And boy do I mean the league’s best team.
In my preview of the Raptors game I wrote that, since November 2nd, the Nets have had the 4th-best net rating in the league. Jacque Vaughn’s Nets have been an excellent team with a solid record, and are sneakily in position to host a playoff series. Boston, over that same month-long time period, is destroying teams by 10.7 points per 100 possessions, to the tune of a 14-3 record. The difference between their point differential and that of the 2nd-place Pelicans is greater than that of the Pelicans and the 10th-place Bucks.
Offense
So, those valuable lessons? I could just boil it down to “play like they did in the first half,” which Brooklyn won by 23 points. The Raptors played like they had enjoyed a Thursday night out in New York City; the Nets played with an aggressive energy. For a matchup like Sunday’s, certainly not “just another game” despite what Jacque Vaughn may say pre-game, that may become nervous energy. That’s reasonable, if not acceptable, so long as the Nets stick to their principles, the first being ball movement:
We know that, even if it’s not at playoff-level intensity, Boston will throw two bodies, if not three, at Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant. How quickly Brooklyn reacts and gets the Celtics defense in motion will go a long way in determining the feel of this one.
A little-known secret about last season’s sweep at the hands of Boston is that the offense…wasn’t a problem, statistically. Brooklyn posted an O-rating of 115 vs. the Celtics, five points better than what Golden State would post in the Finals. That was largely thanks to role players like Bruce Brown and Seth Curry making everything. Even then, though, the largely stagnant offense, coupled with a high turnover rate that allowed Boston to get out and run, played into the Celtics’ hands. They were never in scramble mode, despite Brooklyn hitting tough shots. Even throwing the kitchen sink at Kevin Durant, there were never bodies unaccounted for. Despite the offensive success the Nets experienced in that series, their offense waned in the fourth-quarter, due to its predictability.
These Brooklyn Nets, particularly under Jacque Vaughn, are much more adept at reading and reacting, inserting bursts of randomness into…
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