The Brooklyn Nets want to play in transition as much as possible given the struggles that they’ve had scoring in its half-court sets. One way for the Nets to do that is by being aggressive on the defensive end and creating turnovers, something they weren’t able to do against the Miami Heat.
In Thursday’s 122-115 loss to the Heat, Brooklyn turned the ball over 14 times while forcing Miami into just nine turnovers over the course of the game. Granted, the Heat scored just 12 points off those turnovers so Brooklyn did a good job of getting back enough to prevent Miami’s initial attempt to score off a turnover.
Forcing opponents into turnovers is part of the formula for the Nets to win games, especially during the time that Ben Simmons and Cam Thomas are out of the lineup. According to Basketball Reference, in Brooklyn’s six wins this season, they have forced their opponents into 12.7 turnovers per game while in their six losses, that figure drops to just 9.3.
It’s not much, but two to three more turnovers could be the difference between a close win and a close loss and Brooklyn knows either scenario far too well. Here’s what Brooklyn head coach Jacque Vaughn had to say about the Nets’ defense:
“We can’t let a team turn us over more than we turn them over, for sure. So, you can look at that stat (turnovers) and I don’t know how many deflections at halftime, but not enough to say that we were the aggressors. So, we’ll always be able to look at that at the end of the night that’ll show how aggressive and physical we’re being. We have to turn teams over, made a difference in our last game. You see tonight when a team, even though we out-rebound them, we don’t turn them over, we’re still fighting uphill.”
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