First published on the public account: Basketball Friends
The Nets' Early-Season Turmoil Comes Down to James Harden
Published: October 28, 2021 US time
Publisher: THE RINGER
Original author: Dan Devine
Original link: Please click to read the original article
Basket/Net/Trap/Situation
Here's how the Nets were forced to solve their current predicament:
With 13 seconds left on offense, Kevin Durant forced a dry jumper in the bottom corner of the strong side against the defenses of Dwayne Dedmond and P.J. Tucker. Brooklyn Nets — a team that overwhelmed their opponents with a relentless offensive offense, hit just two of their nine shots in the last six minutes, giving the visiting Heat a 20-5 lead and forcing Durant to have to deal with it personally
Another reason he had to make such an offensive choice was that another core player on the Nets, James Harden, a man who was once omnipotent, still hadn't found himself in this game, having just conceded a three-pointer and a hand-pass in the first few rounds, a round he handed the ball to Durant just before halftime. For now, he's still mired in one of the worst recessions of his career
Another of the Big Three, Kyrie Owen, still has no intention of playing and will not set foot on the court for the foreseeable future, unless it is fully weathered by the epidemic or a sudden change in public health policy in New York
It's been a week since the start of the game, and this season the Nets were ready to play a big game, and now it seems that the Nets' record is not ideal. Durant kept asking the Nets offensive questions in this way, and the Nets couldn't come up with a better answer than "Hey, Irving, come back and play."
Obviously, this is a very good answer. Despite the Nets' chaos at the start of the season, Durant averaged 29.8 points, 10 rebounds and five assists per game from 62.9 percent shooting. While Durant came up with an MVP-level performance, it wasn't enough to solve the problems the Nets are currently facing, especially for a team that expects to average defensively. (The Nets are 17th in points per game and 25th or even lower in terms of turnovers, second offense and fast-break scores.)
The Nets lost 106-93 at home to the Heat on Thursday with Durant on the floor, the nets' lowest regular-season scoring game so far since the Big Three, and the second-lowest at home to the Hornets on Monday
Even without Irving, the team entered the season as the most popular champion, and the problems he is currently facing are far from being solved by having a "superman" Durant. The Nets' problems are mostly stemming from Harden, who must step up and solve the problems, and although he has won three scoring championships and the 2017-18 Most Valuable Player trophy, his season looks terrible off to a terrible start
Open/Quarter/Lost/Lost
In the five games that have ended, Harden has not averaged more than 20 points per game, and the last time he averaged less than 20 points per game was a decade ago, when he was still a bench player for the Thunder. A lot of teams want a starting point guard who averages 16.6 points, eight assists and seven rebounds per game. But given Harden's previous glossy resume and the Nets' need for offensive firepower in Irving's absence, Harden's performance is not just a problem, it's a disaster
Many, including Nets head coach Steve Nash, have pointed out that a key factor in Harden's slow adaptation to the game is the NBA's recent adjustment of its shooting foul sentencing strategy. Entering the 2021-2022 season, the league issued an announcement when "offensive players take the initiative to make physical contact with defensive players in an unnatural angle and way" The referee will no longer blow fouls against defensive players, and when Harden breaks through with the ball, he will unnaturally contact defenders with his arms, which is a good way to create fouls
But when the league changed the penalty scale, it was not an advantage for him but a disadvantage, and from the first five games, Harden seemed to take a while to adapt to this new standard, and by the end of the first five games, he had only tried 15 free throws this season, the lowest number of free throws in the first five games of his NBA career in more than 10 years
Water/soil/no/service
Harden is far from the only player to have been affected by a change in the size of his decision. The average number of free throws on NBA teams this year has reached the lowest level in NBA history, and since the 2020-21 season, the number of free throws per game for NBA teams has dropped about twice, three times less than in the 2019-20 season
Among them, Harden is the most seriously affected player, because of the number of free throws, he has been the focus of the referee's attention for many years, and similarly, because of the change of the scale of the penalty, he has become a negative model in the eyes of the referee. Harden has challenged the new rules more than once this season: start making contact with a guard, lock on to an arm, and bounce his head back. However, the whistle did not sound, and the play ultimately failed
But as Harden himself said, his empty shooting percentage this season is only a pitiful 19.2%, far less than last season's 44%, and even only reached his peak - a third of the 2019-20 season, although this is not the whole reason for Harden's poor performance, a few more free throws per game may help Harden's performance, but the change in the referee's decision scale has nothing to do with Harden's attempts to reduce the number of shots per game. Nor should it cause Harden to reach a career-low shooting percentage, or cause Harden to reach a career-high mid-range shooting percentage, or cause Harden to hit two-thirds of his three-pointers out of 15 of 39 from the inside
Cause/its/cause/cause
The main reason for these problems is because Harden lacks explosiveness when breaking through: he can't break through the defenders in dribbling, can't create space when the opponent's interior line shrinks, and can't use MVP-level strength to crush the opponent's defense. (It's also because of the opposing side's targeted defense, Irving was removed from the roster, except for Patty Mills and Joe Harris, who have three-point range, other role players have little threat outside the three-point line, making opposing defenders shrink the inside line more firmly) We have seen this in the past decade: When Harden plays well, he can perfectly combine his strength, speed and intelligence, and understand when he needs to attack autonomously and when he needs to share the ball
Maybe it's a sign that Harden, 32, has played more games in the last 13 years than anyone in the same period except LeBron James, and now he has to slow down. Or, more likely, it's a sign that Harden hasn't regained his rhythm after recovering from a serious right hamstring strain throughout the offseason.
For most of the final month and a half of last season, injuries cost him, and he played only 43 seconds in the Eastern Conference semifinals intact. In the Nets' final three games against the Bucks, he spent most of his time dragging a single leg, and after losing to the Heat on Wednesday, Harden told reporters: "I didn't get a chance to play wildball this summer, or any other league. ”
"My body has been recovering for three months since last season's injury. So, this is my fifth race after my recovery. As much as I'd love to speed up the recovery process and get back to basketball and killing, I have to take it slow," said the Nets, who contributed more than 21 percent of their turnovers, which will be his career record
Many times he lost touch with the Big Men of the Nets: including an airlift with Nick Clarkston last season, a pétanque/pinball with La Marcus Aldridge, and even bouncing passes that often reached the feet of the referees. Brooklyn hopes that over time and with more co-op drills, all of the problems Harden currently faces, including chemistry with teammates, shooting percentage from long range, jump shots, bounce bursts, will find a reasonable solution. If he can really solve it, the Nets' offense could be sharp again
Road/in/where/where
For now, however, it seems that this still has a long way to go. In five games, when Durant and Harden competed on the same stage, the Nets scored just 93 points per 100 possessions. That's 29.1 points less than last season, which is a huge chasm that's bigger than the team with the most offensive efficiency of all time (last year's Nets, who scored 117.3 points per 100 possessions) and the least offensively efficient team in the NBA since the 21st century (the Nuggets in 2002-03, who scored only 91.2 points per 100 possessions).
In other words: Somehow, right now, the two greatest scorers in basketball history are playing in the same place as the worst teams in NBA history. The Nets are completely off course set before the start of the season, and head coach Nash and his coaching staff had better hurry up and figure it out. What should the Nets do in the face of other teams in the East before Harden returns to full form, in the face of Irving's inability to play.