The Brooklyn Nets started the new season off on a blazing hot streak, beating down the likes of the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics. Since then, they’ve lost three of their last four and suddenly look far less formidable than they did at the beginning of the year.
While Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving have been great in the early going, they haven’t been able to address Brooklyn’s one big weakness: defense.
The Nets rank 20th in the NBA in points allowed have shown a propensity for giving up buckets to squads that, in reality, shouldn’t be scoring so easily against them.
This week, Doug Norrie of the Locked On Nets podcast addressed the biggest flaw in Brooklyn’s game at the moment.
“In terms of the Kyrie and KD piece, they come out with all the firepower that you really want and the scoring was kind of at will for both of them, especially for Kyrie early,” he said.
“They’re pretty efficient from the field overall. The early scoring and early rotations looked okay on the offensive end. But the theme again here is that, even early, where it looked like they could probably start pulling away they just couldn’t because they can’t they simply could not get any stops on the other end…
“It’s this theme of, we’re getting all the offense we can handle and we just can’t get any stops at all on the defensive end over and over and over again. The Nets starters were all plus, by the way, the bench is really kind of what let it up. That’s what I kind of was seeing early,” he continued.
“The Nets can’t let these teams hang around early because when other teams have enough firepower if it gets late, the Nets could be in trouble. That’s kind of what ended up happening. I was thinking this whole first half, come on, get two stops in a row, please, three stops in a row but they just really couldn’t do it.”
There is simply too much talent on Brooklyn’s roster for the team not to do well in some capacity this year. But will it be well enough to win a championship? At the moment, the answer appears to be no.
Charles Kruger has been credentialed to cover two Super Bowls, four NBA Finals, and one World Series. A 20-year veteran in the sports world, he has sources spanning the NBA, MLB, NFL, UFC and NASCAR. Currently residing in Los Angeles, Calif., he is Game 7’s go-to source for rumors surrounding the Lakers, Clippers and Dodgers.
