The Nets were swept away by the Celtics, and the series that was originally considered a top star vs top team ended in a nearly one-sided situation. Durant, who was frozen in 3 of his four games, became the target of the Nets' exit.
Is Durant the biggest person responsible for the Nets' exit? As the star of the team, it may not be a big problem to say so. But it doesn't make sense to have such a big Waterloo in the first round of a superstar playoff in the first round of a playoff that it's just a cathartic "Durant just can't do it." If you dig deeper into the Nets' game, you will find that Nash's deployment has had a decisive impact on Durant's play.
Taking Durant's G3, which has only 11 shots, for example, Durant has 36 position battles in the whole game and then does not shoot the ball himself but passes the ball out. Among them, 1 was Durant's own stoppage mistake forced to pass, 5 were tactical arrangement passes, and the remaining 30 shots were encountered by the upper double attack, the inside multi-person defense or three people "built a wall" to block the travel route. If you don't consider the value that "supergiants should play against three people by themselves", Durant's passing is not too much of a problem. But from another point of view, the Celtics forced Durant to drop the ball is already a great success in strategy, similar things have happened to Curry and Harden in the past.
So, it's all 5-on-5 basketball, so why can the Celtics put two or even three people to surround Durant? Durant is caught in the pinch, someone must benefit, who benefits? Looking at G3's data sheet, you can see that Bruce Brown, who has made as many as 22 real shots in the whole game, is the biggest beneficiary, as if Bruce Brown became the core boss of the Nets overnight, and he never has the ability to carry so many balls in the regular season.
Of Durant's 30 forced balls, 15 were Bruce Brown's opponents pinching Durant, or the Celtics pinching Durant by rotating positions and letting Brown out. Admittedly, Brown responded to these shorts with empty cuts, fixed jump shots and rushing rebounds, handing over beautiful report cards in some games in the series, doing what he should do as a role player, but the damage he did to the Nets' overall offense was obvious.
Nash foolishly thought that Bruce Brown could help the Nets' weak defense, but in fact, Tatum faced this kind of short defender, it was completely for grabs, even if Brown was not good at playing, the Nets had a bunch of defensive weaknesses that could be blocked and dismantled like a la carte. Nash's fantasy defensive role is nothing more than a moon in the mirror, which exists only in his mind.
It wasn't until he was forced into a desperate situation 0-3 that Nash remembered that the Nets needed to play against the Celtics to win, and the G4 slashed Brown's time and put up the extreme lineup of Mills Curry Jr. Irving Durant. Although this lineup has no defensive rebounding aggressiveness and may not be able to beat the Green Army, it at least gives Durant a chance to play one-on-one star value. The G4 Durant's 39 points wasn't self-redemption after three decadent games, but something that should have happened after adjusting the rotation strategy.
Nash may not be able to prevent the Nets from being beaten by the Celtics, but since he relies infinitely on the stars in his hands to win, he should at least create an environment for the stars to play their own abilities, rather than expecting the stars to play a two-and-three and drag him out of the mire.