Kyrie Irving and Joe Harris are still out of the lineup, and there are still many players on the team who can't play because of health and safety agreements, so the Nets have only 8 players to play in total against the Raptors. But under the leadership of Kevin Durant, the Nets still narrowly beat the Raptors at home, and every player who played was full of energy, so this unexpected change also gave the Nets many benches and young players the opportunity to show themselves.
Due to the lack of a tidy lineup, it also forced the Nets coaching staff to make a big change, first of all, they let Blake Griffin and Nicholas Clarkston play at the same time, and the Nets played the inside double tower lineup. You must know that the team only played this briefly in the opening stage, and then reused a large and four small lineup, but now there is really no way, the Nets are really no one to use. In this game, Nicholas Clarkston was the starting center, and he cut 16 points and 7 rebounds on 8-of-10 shooting in 26 minutes. To know that Clarkston is one of the few new blood in the Nets rotation lineup, Clarkston has excellent physical talent and athletic ability. From the perspective of style, the youngster is a bit like the poor version of Capela, mainly responsible for the interior of the pie, rebounding protection and defense. Because the Nets are determined to compete for the title, Clarkston is relatively young, so the Nets can't reuse him. But if Clarkston can maintain this momentum and continue to improve, it will undoubtedly become an important addition to the Nets.
At the same time, the former champion Blake Griffin has also returned from the fifth position in the small ball at the beginning of the season to the more familiar position of the big forward. Due to his age and injuries, Griffin is indeed indistinguishable from his peak. So although Griffin had his second spring after joining the Nets in the second half of last season, it now seems that it can only be regarded as a return to the light. Griffin started the season very poorly, and we all know that even at his peak, Griffin was a typical offensive and defensively weak player. Then once Griffin can't score too many points, he will be targeted by the opponent as a loophole on the court, and his role will naturally be very limited. In this game, Griffin finally played, he had 13 points, 5 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 steals, once again showing his all-round skills.
The most impressive thing about the Nets this time is naturally that the two previously unknown youngsters David Duke and Kessler Edwards have played quite differently. They are all players with two-way contracts, including David Duke, who lost this year's draft, and it wasn't long before the Nets switched him to a two-way contract. David Duke is now 22 years old, obviously he is an older rookie, the potential is relatively inferior to other young people, coupled with this year is a well-known draft year, so the final David Duke named Sun Shan, such examples are also quite common.
It was only David Duke's third game for the Nets, and the coaching staff even let him start on top, which was a helpless move. Unexpectedly, David Duke's first career start, he cut a double-double data of 10 points and 13 rebounds, of which 6 were frontcourt rebounds, which showed that David Duke was very positive in rushing, and he also contributed 3 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks, which was a full data column. To know that David Duke's official height is only 1.93 meters, this is actually one of the reasons for his poor market. But just as the so-called diligence can make up for the clumsiness, David Duke is a bit like a replica of Bruce Brown, who can't play this time, and David Duke is effective in filling this gap, so that many fans remember his name.
Veteran Nets fans know that unlike some other championship-level teams, the Nets have as many as five picks in this year's draft, which allows the team to accumulate more fresh blood for the future, and 21-year-old Kessler Edwards was selected by the Nets in the second round. Due to the abundance of talent in the team, Kessler Edwards can only sign a two-way contract, and he has few opportunities to play at the beginning of the season.
Just as everything is difficult at the beginning, the key lies in whether you have the ability to grasp the opportunity when it comes. So the game began — Edwards also handed over a single list of 17 points, 10 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals, and his plus-minus was +10, second on the team behind point guard Patrick Mills. Meanwhile, although Edwards has not made many appearances, he has a strong ability to seize opportunities, and Edwards' shooting and three-point shooting rate have all exceeded 50% so far. It turns out that the players who can enter the NBA must have some talent and ability, and if the Nets take this opportunity to find more young players worth cultivating and use them as a reserve army, it will be a windfall.