The Ringer NBA Show - Did the Nets Solve the Regular Season? | The Answer

Episode Date: April 9, 2021

Chris is joined by The Ringer’s Rob Mahoney to discuss the Nets' experimental approach to the regular season (02:00), the success of buyout additions Blake Griffin and LaMarcus Aldridge (35:00), and more. Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Rob Mahoney Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From in-depth analysis of basketball and football to life advice, Ryan Rusillo has got you covered on the Ryan Rusillo podcast. Join him as he talks to some of the best names in sports while providing sharp analysis and wit you won't find elsewhere. Check out the Ryan Rusillo podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to The Ringer NBA show. It is The Answer. I'm your host Chris Ryan and this week we are asking, did the Nets show us a new way to watch the NBA regular season this year? So an amazing performance by the Brooklyn Nets against the New Orleans Pelicans on Wednesday

and it got me thinking you know, we haven't talked about the Nets in a while probably since the Hardin Trade and it seemed like we were due and Rob Mahoney from the Ringer wrote a really great piece this week about how the Nets have been treating this season as a laboratory as a place to experiment both tactically but obviously with their personnel constantly shifting from Durant's injury, Hardin's arrival,

Kyrie's absences and the emergence of these incredible role players that they seem to have happened upon, you know, may have heard of, like, those guys like Blake Griffin and Lamarcus Aldridge, what feel-good stories those are to see those role players? The Nets have just been trying stuff. And I don't know that a lot of teams really do that. You know, as a Sixers fan, it's been an awesome season. But I don't really think that we have been experimenting very much.

Whereas when you look at Brooklyn and you look at all that they've had to deal with, but also all that they've chosen to take on, it's a fascinating way to go through the regular season. I think a lot of coaches, coach scared. I think a lot of teams play scared, or a lot of teams just get sort of settled with what they are and who they want to be. And the Nets haven't really done that. So I wanted to talk to Rob about whether or not that was something that specifically only Brooklyn could do because of their talent

or whether it was something that other teams should maybe think about. And we also just wanted to have a general sort of like stand in slackjawed awe of this Brooklyn juggernaut conversation. So let's get into my chat with Rob Mahoney. Joining me back on the show, I think third or fourth time. It's Rob Mahoney. What's up, Rob? I'm just a regular here now. I enjoy it.

I do too. I hope you know my order by now. I hope we have that kind of patter. Yeah, that's right. Rob is here to talk about the Brooklyn Nets, but on a more broad way, broad spectrum, I want to talk a little bit about

how the Nets are treating the regular season and whether or not it's a way for other teams to maybe treat it in the future or if you have to have Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden to exactly do what the Nets are doing. So Rob wrote a piece this week. It's on the ringer. It's called Brooklyn has turned the regular season into its laboratory. And Rob, I was curious just whether or not this was sort of like an idea that met a team or a team that met an idea when it comes to the piece. Because on one hand, I think we're always looking for ways into a regular season that can often feel like a little bit of a drag at times, you know, where you sort of get our bearings and then head towards the postseason. But it has a lot of valleys. Was this something where you were like, there was something about the way Brooklyn played that jumped out at you, or had you been thinking

about this and Brooklyn kind of answered it? Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably an idea that met a team, just because for me, this is a much longer, larger process of watching basketball and evaluating teams. And Brooklyn came in, even from the start of the season, and look like a team that was going to do exactly this. And, you know, teams are, their appetite for adventurousness in the regular season varies. And, you know, coaches have jobs on the line. Players are up for contracts. Like, there's a lot of variables that go into this stuff and dictate what teams are willing to do or how conservative they're going to be. But as you mentioned, when you have Kevin Durant, when you have this kind of talent, and I think most importantly, too, when you're, there's a lot of clarity in what

the nets are playing for, right? Like, they're playing for a championship. They are playing for a deep playoff run. The regular season, it matters in some ways, but only as a vehicle to get you there. And so if it can be a vehicle for trying out every possibility of how you can play and what kind of lineups you can put together, that's probably the best way to get to that endpoint. Yeah, I've been fascinated with them for a lot of different reasons. Obviously, you know, whenever you see the construction of a super team, usually that first year, no matter what the end result is, there's going to be some chemistry issues, there's off-court stuff. There's also a lot of like scrutiny. Like I obviously remember the first iteration of that

heat team. And essentially it was like a nightly appointment viewing to see if they lost. And that was like the most exciting thing in sports was seeing each team the heat played, give them their best shot. It was almost like a weird, it was like a tournament game on a nightly basis when they first started. I didn't really get that feeling with the Nets. And I don't know whether or not

that's because the league has changed so much in the 10 years or whatever since the Heat formed that first time. But I get the feeling like the Nets have been able to basically conduct their basketball away from the noise, even though they have

been a part of their fair share of off-court stuff, whether it's Kyrie missing games, the hardened trade, and everything that went into that with him, basically talking his way out of Houston. And then Durant, coming back from the Achilles, going down with his hamstring, and in the meantime, getting into like, Rappaport zone,

all this stuff, other teams you would call that huge distractions, can they focus and win the championship? I don't, when I watch the Nets play basketball, that stuff never seems to matter. No, I think you're right that the heat in a lot of, always normalized a lot of this stuff. Just the experience of watching super teams. And to your point, other teams playing against them just feels substantively different now. And the closest thing I think we've seen since the heat to that experience, the every night is a chance to beat this team,

is maybe like the Warriors when they were going for the record. Yeah. And especially when they were going on long win streaks. And then it's like, okay, can you crack this code? Even more so than when they got Durant. Like that was the time where it was, we need to beat this team in this random regular season game, which it just puts a very different kind of spotlight on a random Thursday night T&T game, even, you know, a marquee by NBA standards, when the regular season and the purpose of it is usually something that's a lot bigger than that. Yeah, you know, that Warriors team, you're talking about the 73 win team, it's almost the flip side of the heat where it was like, I think people generally were like, I want them

to do this. Like, this is really cool that they're making this run at this record. I remember being in like a bar in Texas and watching that Memphis game. towards the end of that season. I think that might have been either the record tying win or the record setting win. And just being like, there was like 17 people standing around at a bar in Austin cheering for the Warriors, which was not like, you know, that was like a like sort of organic, you know, sports fandom moment that I think that you don't really get that often. But with the Nets, it's like, I'm more watching them to kind of see what they might become.

And that's scary when you think about some of the results. that they've already put up this season. Yeah, the fact that they are so far from their finished product and really don't even know what that finished product is going to look like, I think is what's so interesting. And it's one of those things where,

you know, if you had to bet your life on who Steve Nash is going to start in an Eastern Conference Finals game, I would advise you to have your affairs in order. You know, like I just have no idea if it's going to be Bruce Brown. Like DeAndre Jordan is getting D&Ps right now. Is he going to be the starter

against Joelle and Bede in the Sixers? I don't know. Maybe Lamarcus Aldridge is. There's just so much. optionality with this team and so much of a willingness to explore it that lends itself to that kind of like I just want to turn on this net schemes and I just see what they're up to. Yeah. So I mean like I want to get into their role players as well because I think that that's like an under remarked. That's not been remarked upon enough. But I want to kind of go through your piece

a little bit here because there's a few lines in here that I thought were really good ideas for jumping off points for this conversation. The first one is the only real value in the regular season is what a team makes of it. So. I imagine that, regardless of whether they had done the hardened trade, I think Steve Nash's approach to this season probably would have been similar. And they've got Mike Dantonie in there, and those guys are obviously on a very similar wavelength in terms of what kind of offense they want to run.

But what do you think the Nets are making of this regular season for our listeners who maybe are kind of trying to get a clearer idea of what we're talking about here? Yeah, I mean, especially when you contrast them with teams that either have to go all out all the time to make the playoffs or they want to go all out in the regular season to prove something to themselves or to the league. The Nets are just kind of going about their business, kicking

every single tire that they have, turning over every rock, looking at every possible lineup combination. And they have a general style of play. But within that, there are so many different versions of the Nets. You know, this is one of the fastest-paced offenses in the NBA, but you put James Hardin

on the floor and he pulls it back, he slows it down. He's a game manager. right now in a very different way than even Kyrie is. And so the fact that you're getting different looks at all of these shades of the Nets, depending on which stars are on the floor, who's in the lineup, who's not, it just gives you such a different lens

to look at a 72-game sample size. Yeah, you know, so we're recording this on Thursday, the Nets tattooed the Pelicans last night. And one of the scariest things, I think, if you're planning, if you're cheering for a team that's going to see the Nets in the playoffs, like I am,

who might see the Nets in the playoffs, is the fact that they, Pelicans were oftentimes doubling Marcus Aldridge. That should honestly scare the shit out of you. If their fourth best player, if that's who he is, if he's not their fifth best behind Harris

an offensive player, is getting doubled on the lower left block by Stephen Adams, and Stephen Adams needs help doing that. There's no math for that. There's no solve for that. There's no defense for that. You can't clone Tibbs

and bring them onto your team. There's nothing you can do about five guys who need double teams. And they're not the first team to do that either. Like Lamarcus has been passing out a doubles basically since he got there. And yeah, in theory, he's the guy you should worry about the least. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were under the, I was under the impression and we can get into the morality of the buyout market later on. But I was under the impression that he was going to be like a nice additive backup for Claxton and Jordan and Brown. And like he was going to come in and play 12 to 20

minutes game. And I guess that is what he's doing. But last night was like, I think his most efficient offensive game, I think, both by eye test, and the numbers are really good for him, too. You know, you're talking about what teams make of the regular season, and I think that we could actually break down a couple of these different approaches teams have, you know,

and some of these are like philosophical, but some of these are, you know, they're basically what happens once you sort of start to figure out what you are. And there's like, we've talked about these pedal to the floor teams, like the 15, 16 Warriors. I think the bucks from the last couple of seasons,

clearly were playing for as like a 60-win season at least, if not locking up home-court advantage. And I think the Jazz this season are playing their asses off every night and I think they want to have home-court advantage. They want teams coming into Utah in close-out games.

That's the pedal to the floor way of doing it. Then there's the switch, the flipping the switch way, which I think really only works if you have a very specific kind of talent. So that specific kind of talent would be LeBron. I think LeBron can not coast, but his teams can be third or fourth and putting it together and guys are taking targeted rests and maybe they're bringing in different buyouts and

veterans. And then all of a sudden it just hits you like a wave, right? Yeah, I mean, Tristan Thompson straight up said that this week. Like when he was with the Cavs, like this is what we did. We didn't really care if we were the fourth seed because we knew what kind of team we were, what kind of team we could be when we wanted to become that. this season is interesting because I don't know that there are that many

teams ready at the switch to flip it they're kind of still looking for it like the clippers are still figuring out where the switch is for them the Lakers like again if they're healthy is one question but what condition they're going to be in by the start of the playoffs is something we'll have to figure out as we go and I think they'll have to figure out when they need to flip that switch and what it even looks like now that they're

incorporating Andre Drummond and there's just a lot more questions around that team than a usual LeBron team yeah and the funny thing about the Lakers this year was that I thought LeBron was kind of going all out. It was A.D., who was more of a switch guy. Like, AD, I wouldn't say he was dog in it or anything like that, but I think he was definitely playing himself into shape. He was coming off a long season. I think he was banged up in the bubble. And they were obviously taking a very conservative route with the Achilles now with his injury. So, yeah, the Lakers and, you know,

Brooklyn has risen as this title favor. because I think partially because the Lakers seem banged up and like we're not really sure whether or not like does LeBron and AD make KCP all of a sudden a competent shooter again or what's going on there. So you've got these LeBron teams. I think you could also go back to some of the Big Three-era Boston teams that tried this. Then there's the staying afloat teams, you know, and I think this is, I think this sounds pejorative and I don't mean it that way. But this is the team that basically knows what they are, knows what they do well, kind of sticks to their rotation. maybe there are some surprises, but for the most part,

are going through the NBA season to be as healthy as possible going to the playoffs and apply what they have already know about themselves to the postseason. I would never say that the Sixers are staying afloat because they're among the best two to three teams in the east.

But I do think that the dock way of doing things is let's find out who we are. Let's be the best version of that. We're not going to surprise anybody. What we're going to do is present you with these overwhelming talent options in Joel, Ben, Tobias, good shooters around them. That's like kind of where I think the Sixers are right now

and there's a couple of other teams probably like that. Yeah, I think the Sixers, I mean, their situation is so much dictated by Joel's injury where if he had been healthy the whole time, maybe they would have been closer to a pedal to the floor team. But as it stands, they're more of a stay afloat. And yeah, Doc's philosophy, definitely among the more conservative coaches

in terms of style, in terms of rotation, stuff like that, sometimes to his detriment. I think that's a team that could probably afford to get a little weirder, but the presence of a player like Embed does make you more rigid in terms of what you can and want to run. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting too, because with Embed and the Sixers and LeBron and the Lakers, I can't tell how much of a bubble that we're in

because I feel like we start talking about MVP earlier and earlier in the media. Yeah. But I do think that some of what happened with Embedon and LeBron is not their injuries, but the way in which they were being deployed was tied to the MVP award. You know what I mean? Like there was, I don't think LeBron would have taken

his two weeks of like rest and relaxation this season had he not twisted that ankle and had he not gotten the high angle sprain and was in contention for an MVP and especially if Embed was still playing. You know, like I don't think he would have ceded the award necessarily to Embed. I mean, LeBron has his finger on the pulse of that conversation

and really he has his thumb on the scale of it. You know, like he is. extremely conscious of what the MVP race looks like and usually the fact that he should be at the top of it, which when you're LeBron, that's a pretty defensible stance to take. It's so weird. This season,

I mean, I think that there's a lot of really viable candidates for the award, but it seems like it might be a participation award this year or an endurance award. Like, it's basically like, because as soon as M.B. went out,

as soon as LeBron went out, I feel like their odds or their favorability dropped a lot. But it's like, are we then just going to give it to the guy who played 75 games? Is that, like, should we just say you have to play X number of games to even qualify for the MVP award? Well, luckily, we have this very nebulous criteria from the league where everyone gets to just make their shit up and decide, oh, he played 30 games, he played 50 games, that's good enough for me. So, I mean, I was really looking forward personally to the philosophical imbid and yogh conversation. Like, which of these skill sets do you value within the context of their team?

Like, that's interesting to talk about. And instead, as you're saying, both here and I think in the rookie of the year race, too, with Lamello out, it's going to be. a lot more, oh, he played 70% of his games, therefore, which is just not as fun. Yeah, Simmons and Rissillo, like, losing their minds about Anthony Edwards possibly winning,

Rookie of the Year was pretty high comedy to be. Not that I disagree with them, but it's just like, you can tell, it's like, this is just going to be one of those seasons where, like, a guy who's, like, had a pretty good year. But, like, you watch Anthony Edwards. It's just, like, Anthony Edwards has, like, total green light. Like, he's got these shooting

25 times a game. Yeah, I mean, they're playing a different sport there. Like, you know, especially for a, you know, Charlotte is a team like we were mentioning that's not even in a, they're kind of staying afloat now because of their injury situation, but they were going all out. Like, that's a franchise that really wants to make the playoffs versus the wolves. I mean, it's performance art a lot of the time.

Now they're a little more structured with Chris Finch, but they're just trying to find who they are, period. Yeah. So that leads us to other categories of approaches to the regular season. I think you have staying afloat. The flip side of that, I think we could call falling apart. I wouldn't necessarily say that that is,

that's kind of like the teams that are stuck in the high lottery. The teams that are struggling to stay at 500 or below and haven't quite tanked out, haven't quite bottomed out, but are still like just sort of try to figure out who they are late into this season. And then the final teams are teams that either should be tanking or are tanking. Teams that maybe don't know that they're tanking.

And that is like a handful of squads, whether it's Houston and Minnesota, as we've talked about before, or I think the Wizards, you know, obviously. So there's a few teams there that are kind of bottomy out. Did you have any other approaches to the regular season here, though? I mean, I think the only kind of gray area within that is where Brooklyn is. And I think to some extent where Milwaukee is, too, I think, you know, they haven't been quite as bold as the Nets,

but that's a team that was in the pedal to the floor slash, we know who we are camp. And they've had to do a lot of soul searching this year. And some of that was Drew Holiday being out, which required Chris Middleton to play a lot of point, which changed their rotation a little bit. But they're also, you know, they're switching a lot more. They're putting Janus more off the ball in crunch time situations,

whether that's with Chris or with Drew handling it. They're doing a lot of the things that, frankly, people have been asking Mike Boodenholzer to do for most of his time there, and they're getting to it, they're getting more comfortable with it, in the hopes that when they run into that wall in the playoffs, again, they'll have something to say about it. There's another idea in your piece that I wanted to chat with you a little bit about, which is that the NFL is more episodic.

This is Rob Mahoney writing here. The NFL is more episodic with enough heft behind a random Monday night game to make it an event. The stakes of the NBA season are more introspective, brought to light

in the slow burn of a team figuring itself out. And if you want to see the value in that marathon, look at what the Nets have worked through and what they've become. I think that what you're getting at

here also is something that, you know, the Nets being the best team in the East right now, as we record this, they have the best offense in the league as we record this. There's an argument to be made, given what they've done this season, that this is the most super of super teams because they can actually lose a link in the chain and still be this. I think a lot of that comes to the Hardin trade.

Because if this was just a Durant Irving team, that conversation is very different. But when you have an MVP who can lead the league as Hardin is right now in minutes per game, that is just an incredible, it gives your team incredible staying power through all these experiments. So, you know, there's kind of two prongs

to this conversation, right, where it's like, there's what should teams be using the regular season for and there's what should those of us watching the regular season be looking for? Yeah.

And I think this idea of the NBA as a less episodic thing in the regular season and more of a season long arc, that's where those two ideas kind of converge for me. Yeah, I mean,

it's especially going to, it's hard for the NBA. Look, there's plenty of NFL games. A lot of them get flexed out towards the end of the season, but there's plenty of NFL games where you might be looking forward to this Monday night or that Sunday night game. And it turns out that this wide receiver, that quarterback, or this quarterback, or this left tackle are hurt. And all of a sudden, like, it's not much of an event. But in the NBA, I think, especially this year with a lot of the COVID absences and the stop start nature of everything,

you know, we have a game coming Saturday, which is, I think should be the marquee event of the NBA season, which would be Lakers' nets on Saturday. day, I think it's on ABC, if not ESPN. And, you know, we're not going to have LeBron. We're not going to have A.D. We're not going to have Hardin. That's not the NBA's fault. But I think when you have a reality like that, you're forced to kind of look at like something

on a much longer continuum than any given one data point, which is hard because I think a lot of people relate to the NBA on a minute to minute night to night basis where they get on Twitter and they do all this analysis and they make, they get their jokes off. but in fact it's like way closer to baseball than it is to football. Well, we have kind of multi-track experiences in that way where you're getting the jokes off on Twitter or whatever. But even if you just follow a team, and especially I think if you followed a team pre,

you know, we've kind of hit on 2010 as kind of a landmark moment in the league, especially if you were following a team before then, you're already kind of trained to look for this stuff, to like look at the NBA this way. Like if you're a Wolves fan, you know, we're talking about Anthony Edwards. If you're a Wolves fan, I mean, first song, But second, you know, you're noticing, you know, you're noticing that Anthony Edwards isn't just scoring more, but like the directionality of his game has changed from month to month. Like, he's evolved as a player within this year.

You're looking at, you know, what does Chris Finch do differently than what Ryan Saunders? Like, these are just things you're monitoring as a fan of that team. So I think we already do this and we make the jokes. You know, it's a multi-track experience in that way because, you know, we can focus on the minutiae. We can, you know, get to the punchlines, get to the soap opera. but the great advantage of the regular season is time. It's just this elongated thing. And when you have that, you get to develop ideas

and you get to develop characters. You know, it is like a season of television in that way where that's where you get the meat of who these teams are and who these people are. Yeah, I mean, I think that in my personal experience, you know, before I thought about doing, we thought about doing this specific podcast, I had been kind of at peace with the idea

of maybe just watching like 80-Sixers games. and that being the way through which I view the league. Like obviously I would watch other stuff, but I think that your personal and sometimes regional fandom of stuff can be a very interesting lens through which to view the league, although you're much more concerned with how is Mike Scott looking

than how is Aaron Gordon fitting in in Denver one night every 10 days that I see the nuggets or something like that. I mean, I want to hear that pot. I want to hear the Chris Ryan's descent into madness podcasts. I think people could just listen to Wrights to Riky Sanchez. It's like they got it covered. I want to ask you about a couple other lines in this piece and that I want to talk a little bit more broadly about the Nets.

But you said, teams with this much stark power tend not to try anything too interesting. Is there a paradox here where somehow they have landed on three talents that have allowed them to the Brooklyn, has landed on these three specific talents, which I think maybe in the beginning, people were like, these guys are just friends or like, you know, like this was like a backroom, all-star cigar smoke room like set up. But in fact, like the very specific

skill sets of these guys allow the nets to be the shape-shifting monster that they are. Has the cigar smoked room changed? Like is that a dated, is it like everybody with their veins in the back now or something? Like let's like, I'm going to give my cousin the contract to the new like water system or something like that. I'm just, I'm wondering if there's still, if deals are still being cut back there. I mean, I mean, Durant seems more like a hookabar kind of guy anyway. Yeah, I think it's more of like a 22nd century vape situation. Yeah, it's not, it's a startup.

I mean, it's, I think we need to give all three of those guys credit for being more flexible than it seemed like they might be. You and I talked after the Hardin trade about like, how much is he going to change his game? How much is he willing to do that? because everything was catered to him in Houston. I think he's been the player he could be. He's been more of a playmaker, more of a team-oriented,

more of a flow guy than he was in Houston. He's still playing a version of his game, but one that fits with everything. And, you know, Kyrie in particular, like this is a great example of what the Nets might do that other teams wouldn't. Is Kevin Durant comes back against the Pelicans last night.

And Kyrie basically just, like, lets him run point for a quarter. Just, you know, Durant inbounds the ball to Kyrie. it right back. He says, I don't want it. I'm going to go stand in the corner. You run this thing for a while. Get your feet under you. That's just something that, you know, he doesn't have to do, something some stars don't do. Maybe for him, maybe for other stars, it might be like, oh, I need to get Kevin Durant into the flow. I need to put him in easy spots. But they're going to say, no, our seven-footer is

going to run point for us for this quarter, and you're just going to have to deal with that. And look, lo and behold, they score 36 to 40 points in that quarter because Kevin Durant is unbelievable. And so there are all kinds of versions of that thing that are happening every night. for the Nets. If you had to describe that that style of offense specifically, I know that they're, they're just constantly switching as much as possible on defense, but on offense. How would you describe their style of basketball? Is it, is it an evolutionary step of the MDA style that we saw in Houston? It's an interesting point because I think for Dantone, if anything, the criticism of him would be that he has his style, he has his base structure, and he doesn't necessarily want to veer

too much from that. Versus the Nets, I think they take that basic spacing. Like, they still run, you know, you could superimpose some of the drag screens they run in transition over the seven seconds or less suns, and it would look exactly the same. Like, there are some concepts there that are very Dantony. And yet they will also just like feed Lamarcus Aldridge on the left block for the first five possessions of the game because they can. And it's a team that never posted up before they got Aldrich.

And all of a sudden, they're going to do that now. So I think it's constantly evolving right. now, which is what makes it so hard to peg down. And it's so hard to... Ultimately, I think, going to be very hard to scout. I don't know which version of the nets you prepare for if you're going to play them in the first or second round of the playoffs.

We always talk about how, like, it's a different sport in the postseason. I would like to see if this is the exception to that rule. Because, you know, I would describe them as honestly as, like, an All-Star team if they were trying. You know, when you watch the NBA All-Star game and you see those flashes of, like, telepathic passing and just kind of like a sense of like everybody on the floor trusts that the other guy can make the play that they're about to set them up for and that feeling of, you know, no open shot is going to be missed. No cut is going to be missed. Like guys just have like

this understanding. And also I want to get to their chemistry in a minute. Like when you have that kind of like it kind of goes beyond X's and O's tactics, I'm not really sure that closing out threes a little bit more aggressively is going to be the solution here. the solution for whom? For a defending, teams defending against the nets. Like where it's like, well, you got to understand it. The playoffs, man, it gets a little tight out there. You're not going to get your corner threes off without somebody running at you.

And I'm like, maybe not, but like, I don't know if it matters. No, I mean, especially when the guy who's then attacking that closeout is Kevin Durant. Or as we saw against the Nets or against the Pelicans, Kyrie Irving, like driving in for a dunk over two guys. Or making fadeaway 17 footers over Stephen Adams. Yeah. I think, you know, the one thing, and again, to give the role players a lot of credit on this team, there aren't a lot of guys who feel like deer in the headlights, who feel like they won't be up for the moment. You know, with the LeBron Cavs, for example, when they got Jordan Clarkson, it was so obvious Jordan Clarkson was not ready for that.

At that point in his career, just like was not prepared to be the guy catching the ball from LeBron and having to make a three or else you lose that game. Maybe he's that player now. He's looking a lot better, a lot more confident in Utah. but all the guys in Brooklyn like Joe Harris seems undaunted to me if you want to close out at him he's driving all the way to the basket sometimes drawing two or three defenders along the way

like Nick Claxton is going to do some wild things sometimes but sometimes you want guys who are willing to step outside a finite role like that and do a dribble drive toward the basket as a big man you need all that stuff to work Bruce Brown does not seem intimidated by anybody like all these guys fit

really well within this very constantly shifting style that the Nets are playing right now. But they also seem like they might just be game for the scrutiny of a playoff series. I don't know what it is.

And maybe it's just the way basketball itself has changed, but this doesn't feel like a bunch of like minimum contract pegs that they have found to fill out the roster. Like somehow,

and I guess this leads to the buyout conversation, somehow Gioza seems like a very, very, like he seems like a kind of old school spurs find where I'm like, I know this guy went to Florida, but like how did you find him

and why is he giving you like 11 really solid minutes here, you know, to back up Kyrie? I mean, he's the kind of guy who for them, it seems like he should be a luxury, but their whole roster is just luxuries. You know,

like you plug in TLC, Timothy Luawa Cabo into the rotation and he just like gives you good minutes for a stretch while Kevin Durant is out. Like the whole lineup is, are those guys. and, you know, I think we, there are a lot of questions about the depth at the beginning of this season. A lot of questions about do we really trust Jeff Green to be the fifth guy.

Jeff Green has been unbelievable. Yeah, he's been awesome this year. And I don't know what that says about the model of what the Nets were building because, you know, some of these guys are holdovers, I think at this point, very few of them from the previous iteration of the Nets. Most of them are just guys. The last Atkinson team, basically. Right. Most of these guys are just guys they cobbled together who were castoffs from other teams. Like, people were not, you know, champing at the bit to get Bruce Brown.

He was not a hot commodity. I've had the TLC experience. It's like, it's like cool, but it's also like you would not want him shooting in any kind of consequential moment. But what they're getting out of him is exactly what they need. Yeah. And I think it's that up and down the roster, everybody. So then in some ways, their personnel style or like the way they assembled this team kind of mirrors the way they play ball on the court. I mean, because there's not a lot that you could say, though, they must have known that they were going to play Bruce Brown at center.

You know what I mean? When they went into the season, maybe they had some hints that Hardin would like to come play there. But I'm sure that they were probably pretty fine with Jared Allen and D. Andre Jordan at the five, and they were going to figure it out with Irving, Durant, Harris, or whatever. And now they've got, you know, the PJ Tucker style, like, micro big in Brown. And it seems to be really working for them. they're still starting him there. I don't know. I kind of wish more teams messed around like this.

I think maybe I'm speaking specifically from the perspective of a Sixers fan who's like even in the Embed absence, I feel like Doc was pretty dogmatic about like, here's how we play and like Dwight is the Embed here. And like I know that they're like Sixers cultists can be very excited about like B-Ball Paul and stuff like that. But like that kind of messing around where you find out,

hey, man, maybe this guy could give us like 10 minutes in a playoff. game is the kind of thing I wish Doc had done a little bit more that Nash definitely has done. Yeah, and I think for the Sixers, there's, you know, the criticism and I think where it has some truth to it there is, in the games and beat is played, the second unit has not been good enough. You know, they haven't had what they need from that second unit in the games and beat is played. Now, the whole tenor of the team shifts when he's been out, of course. But so, like, could you have done more there to jazz things up to try different combinations? I think, of course,

you could have. And that's where, you know, the Nets, every team and every fan base has their B-Ball Paul, right? Like the guy that they wish played more. The Nets don't really have that guy. I think Nick Clackston is the closest thing to it just because they're probably Nets fans who want him to play 30 minutes a game.

But everyone gets a shot. Like everyone in Brooklyn has gotten a shot. Terrence Mann is a really good example of a guy that you find over the course of a season. And then now it looks like realize that you don't need Lou Williams if you've got Terrence Man. and Rondo. You know what I mean? That's like something that the Clippers did a really good job

for the course of the year. They clearly thought sometime around the deadline, or if not before, this team cannot beat Utah, Phoenix, L.A., all like in some combination. So they needed to do something and just watching Man on the Clippers the last couple of games has been really impressive to see him kind of grow into that role. I think more teams should probably accept maybe like five to seven more losses to find out five to seven more truisms about their roster. Yeah. You know, there are some teams that can't afford it. There's some, you know, and maybe some of them are protecting against, say, like,

maybe we would have said that about the Lakers at the start of the season, all of a sudden LeBron and ADR out of the lineup and you're talking about, are the Lakers going to fall into the play-in game? Like, that's the cost of doing this business. But as long as you can get away with it, as long as your roster is relatively healthy, I'm, I'm in favor of it. I think that's the way you should navigate the season if you have aspirations of being a high-level playoff team in particular.

Yeah, I mean, the nets have the luxury of never really putting together too many losses in a row. You know, even when they were probably short-handed after the hardened trade, I think they were like four and five at the beginning of the season or something like that. But, man, they rip off wins and chunks unlike any team other than basically Utah this season. And they've never lost so many in a row that anyone starts to like look under the hood. And that's a big thing, you know? Well, that's the thing we don't know about them yet is what happens if they go down, owe to in a playoff series, and they have everybody. There's no excuses. There's no like hardens out, Durant's out. Everybody's on the floor. These are three guys who haven't had to problem solve in

that particular way yet. So that's the big unknown for them. And I think some of the tradeoff of the situation they've been in and the style they play is you just don't have a lot of foundational experience of having your best players on the floor in moments of adversity. I get very into the backseat driving on coaches in the playoffs, but there's part of me that feels like that will be a moot point when it comes to the playoffs of the nets. It's like, what's the last play that Steve Nash runs? Sure, we can second guess it and be like, Hardin should have taken it or Kyrie should have taken it.

It's like, are you really going to get mad at him for getting Durand jumper from somewhere on the floor? That sounds like a pretty high percentage shot, you know what I mean? So it's more just that it's a moot point than you're in the Kyrie school of, oh, we actually have six head coaches, including our star players. Let's talk about the buyout guys. I think they've done a great job bringing those guys in. And, you know, I sent out a couple of text messages.

I sound like Winhorse, but I did do a little, like, just poke it around. But I was like, so how, like, what's the deal with this version of Blake? What's this version of Lamarcus? Because I think that there was a sentiment that these two dudes are just absolutely gassed. And like, they might give you one heroic or two heroic performances, but this is not what people are making it out to be, where it's just somehow plundering the rest of the league. I appreciate the fact that Blake has now dunked it as many times since he's joined the nets as he has in like two years or whatever that stat was I saw the other night. Yeah.

I will say that I do think that it looks like these guys have a little bit more gas in the tank than I thought they did. And that the idea that Aldridge was like completely washed. And that's why San Antonio was getting rid of him. I think San Antonio knows what they are. And they like arrived at this conclusion to Aldridge's time in. in Texas. But man, like,

do you feel like after watching them for half a dozen, 10 games, you're feeling differently about the buyout boys than you were before? I think Blake in particular.

Like, he looks really good and looks like he can fit what they need, even defensively. Like, we've just seen him move and rotate and be vertical

and do all the things you would want a big to do. Aldridge is still going to be a little bit of a wait and see and I think is more matchup dependent. But if he's taking

not Blake's minutes or class Laxton's minutes, but basically D'Andre Jordan's minutes, that's a net gain to me. Yeah, I mean, what Lamarcus gives you, and they're going to ask this question about Lamarcus, they're going to ask it about Brown, they're going to ask it about Claxton. What do they give you against Inde? Right. So when it gets down to that time and maybe even Janus in that way, depending on how Bud is deploying Janus against the nets,

the nets, the nets will not be forming a fucking wall. So what are we talking about here? Like if the Sixers slow it down and grind it out, can anyone hang with Embed? Or are we talking about Embedd's going to put 42 on the nets and then it's just a shootout kind of thing? I think it's going to be a lot of swarming. It's going to be, you know, this is a team that is comfortable putting smaller defenders in disadvantageous positions and then just flocking to the ball, getting a lot of length around it. I mean, Bruce Brown guards guys who are like seven feet tall on a nightly basis. That's just what they do. So he's not going to guard Embededdeed. could you apply the same principles to Jeff Green guarding Embed for stretches, to Durant guarding Joel Embed for stretches? Those are things you can

experiment with. I still think we're going to see a lot of one big body on Embed and then a double with length coming to him and really testing all that passing and the passing out of doubles that he's been trying to work on this season. I think that's what it's going to come down to. I don't think it's going to be an Embed scores 40

points a night kind of series. I think it's does he have eight turnovers or does he have eight assists? So to conclude this, and I agree with you about Blake, by the way. I just think that I really, I don't think especially this season it's going to matter to him at all. And I think he's probably just happy to be in playing meaningful basketball for the first time in a couple years. He actually seems like somebody who still has something about him that is like a bounceability, an energy and like a kind of like an elastic. to him that I think is like really suited for these sort of spurts and this this role player role rather than hey Blake needs to get a lot of touches Blake needs to dribble at the top of the key for a while and see what's going on. Blake might want to take a couple 17 footers, whatever. Like seeing him in the corner, seeing him cutting to the basket, it should be pretty

nerve-wracking for the rest of the league. Well, and that's where, you know, a lot has been made of his dunks so far as you mentioned. And certainly you watch the Brooklyn bench every time he dunks and they're freaking out. I'm sure it's like a, you know, F the haters kind of situation with all that. But there's a reason he's being left open, right? Like, it's because he's the fifth guy on the floor. It's because the defense doesn't think he's going to cut. They're still reacting to him like he's Detroit Blake. And I think the pistons are better served by having him out of there. Like, it was doing them no good to have him there. But in Brooklyn, in spurts, I think you're his game does lend itself to that.

And most importantly, for a guy with bad knees, you bottle up what he does in 12 to 15 minutes, that's a good player. And it's a good player who can sustain for longer stretches of time. So this is the other thing, and we can sort of wrap it up here. But in terms of chemistry,

I too noticed the bench bob celebrations. I too noticed that Lamarca's Aldridge taking turnaround fadeaway jumpers and Harden, calling the shot in as it left, his hand. And that actually was like, man, I think that these guys are pretty into each other. And I think that they have a much higher estimation of where Aldridge and Griffin are in their careers than maybe like what the larger basketball discourse has given those guys credit

for. I don't really remember seeing a super team with this kind of, I guess the first Durant warriors, but these guys seem to fucking love playing with one another from the 13th guy, the 12th guy on the bench to Harden, Kyrie and Durant. Well, everyone's gotten to eat a little bit. That always helps. And I think having, even the guys who are out or who were injured, like Durant was out for a while, but he was with the team. Like, it always hurts when a guy's injured and has to stay home and rehab versus when

you can travel, you can be around it. And when you can have James Harden celebrating Lamarcus Aldridge fadeaway jumpers. Like, that is a meaningful thing. And I think, you know, every super team does have moments of chemistry. You know, like, the heat, what was, I'm trying to remember what the viral video. sensation that the heat made where it was like a music cue where everyone freaks out.

The Harlem Shake? The Harlem Shake, thank you. Yeah, yeah. So, like, every, you know, I'm sure there are lots of versions of that kind of thing. For a second, I thought you were referring to when those guys made fun of Dirk

for having a cold. And that was your viral moment. Very different kind of viral moment. That might have been more of a low point of their chemistry. But there, yeah, there's a like, the cameras are on us, therefore let's act happy kind of viral, like kind of a chemistry.

And then there's this sort of thing, which I do think, is a little bit different. I want to ask you this last question. Are we underrating what Nash has done this season? Well, we did just say that coaching doesn't matter, right? Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.

But, like, I mean, I guess in some ways, you know, like Kerr had the signature move, the first title year. You know, he had the lineup of death idea. And, you know, it wasn't his idea. It was an assistance. But he had like a signature coaching move. And I now, to some extent, when you read like, I know you guys talk to the light years dudes on group chat.

I feel like there is a real anti-Kir, animus brewing among certain factions of the Warriors fandom because they're like, he's trying to run the triangle with guys you should be running really simple P&R. But with Nash this year, it's pretty much like guided the ship through two Kyrie absences, not the same kind of absence necessarily, but like two sort of like Kyrie's not going to be with the team for a couple of days situations. The Durant hamstring. the hardened trade,

essentially navigating the Hardin thing to the point where now, dudes are just like, Hardin's great. Love this guy. You know what I mean? Like, we've just completely moved past

them getting out of Houston. I guess maybe the presence of Dan Tony makes everybody think this is like Dan Tony's running the offense and Nash is just wearing cool shoes and clapping. But he's doing a pretty nice job keeping everybody on the same page.

I think he's doing an excellent job. And like sometimes coaching is knowing when to get out of the way. Sometimes it's knowing, when to empower certain guys. Like, he's acing all of that stuff. And so if you want to go through and look at the Nets DHOs, like there's some good, clean stuff in there.

There's lots to celebrate. But it's really more about all this kind of adaptability we've been talking about. There are coaches who do not do this. And there are a lot of coaches who are coaching for their jobs on a nightly basis and are just so hyper-focused on we need to win every game, who live and die with that kind of mentality. And I think there's something admirable about that. but that's not what the Nets needed.

And so credit to that organization for recognizing the kind of coach they needed and that Steve could be that guy, because who knew? I mean, he doesn't have a body of work to judge, but just temperamentally, I think he's been perfect for that team. Yeah, I mean, he's probably,

I'm trying to think, like, is he the best player that is a coach now since, like, Bird? I mean, who, like, is he the, like, the best NBA player to be a coach, to be this good at coaching? I guess that's a lot of like qualifiers since since bird.

Yeah, I mean, it's the best player part because there are guys like Kerr and Rick Carlisle. There's lots of good, good former players who are coaches, Nate McMillan, but like, you know, in terms of a former MVP who is a coach and is showing to be really capable for this team, he's off to a great start. But I think the Kerr, the Kerr met comparison is telling in that not all coaches are great for every situation. Sometimes there's skill sets lean more toward one team or the other. we don't know what Nash would look like with a different kind of team. But for this one,

what he does well aligns really well with what they need. Yeah, Steve Nashman, go coach the Knicks. What's wrong with you? Challenge yourself. Rob, thank you so much for joining me today on The Answer. Thanks, Chris. Thanks so much to Rob Mahoney and thanks to listen to The Answer. We've got such a great slate of NBA stuff

as we round into the postseason and it's a draft season to keep your eye on Ringar MBA University. That goes every two weeks on the Ringer NBA fee with KOC and Kyle and sharks. We've got real ones on Mondays, got group chat on Tuesdays. You've got Ringer MBA University every other

Wednesday. The answer on Fridays and of course mismatch is on Tuesdays and Fridays so keep listening to all that night. Of course, Bill and Ryan on Sunday nights and throughout the week. So tons of NBA stuff as the postseason and draft season comes along, stay tuned to the Ringer NBA show.