The Brooklyn Nets have seen a lot of changes since the February trade deadline for the 2022-23 season brought about the trades of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. Since then, Brooklyn’s plan of attack has changed now that the team’s player composition is different and some in the NBA space are taking notice.
In a recent article by Bleacher Report, Andy Bailey said that the Nets will be worse when it comes to shooting/scoring the ball. Even though Brooklyn is led by up-and-coming wings in Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson, that duo is a considerable step down from the superstar duo of Durant and Irving.
From the beginning of the season to Jan. 8, Durant’s last game with the Nets last season, Brooklyn was fourth in the league in offensive rating (115.7) and led the league in true-shooting percentage (61.6%). From Feb. 11, the first game where the Nets had its entire roster available after the trades of Durant and Irving, to the end of the season, the Nets were 23rd in offensive rating (113.2) and 21st in true-shooting percentage (57.2%).
To put it simply, it was harder for Brooklyn to score the ball since they didn’t have a player on the level of Durant/Irving to run the offense through, even though Bridges averaged 26.1 points per game with the Nets. Here’s why Bailey says that Brooklyn will be worse offensively:
“The Brooklyn Nets got an interesting haul of talent and assets in their midseason Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving trades, but now we get to see the results over the course of an entire campaign.
And a couple numbers suggest the reshaped roster could struggle to produce at the same level on offense.
When Durant and Irving shared the floor in 2022-23, Brooklyn scored 117.8 points per 100 possessions. From the day KD was traded to the end of the season, it scored 113.8, a number that ranked 23rd in the NBA over that span.
And the Nets didn’t really add any offense to the mix during the summer. On the contrary, losing the outside shooting of Joe Harris, Seth Curry, Yuta Watanabe and Patty Mills could suppress the numbers on that end of the floor even more.”
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