Brooklyn Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn has to be trying to figure out a lot of things with this new roster on the fly. He has been trying to figure out his playoff rotation while trying to figure out how this team should play, the strengths/weaknesses, etc. It seems that he and the team are starting to figure all of that out.
In Friday’s 124-123 overtime win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, it was another display of how the Nets must play if they want to be competitive. In the first half, Brooklyn had a tough time keeping up with Minnesota as they had trouble scoring as well as defending the Timberwolves effectively. At one point, Minnesota made 13 of 14 field-goals as Brooklyn was a step slow for most of the first half.
In the second half, the Nets were able to tighten things up on both ends of the floor. The offense went into Spencer Dinwiddie and Mikal Bridges breaking down their man off the dribble and either scoring off that action or finding an open teammate while their defense was them switching and gang-rebounding at the basket. Vaughn reacted to how the Nets are starting to form their identity:
“Yes, it’s been interesting to see like the metamorphosis of this group kind of thing. We at the beginning thought okay, how are we going to score? We can’t play ISO ball like we did previously in the past. Are we going to be able to have multiple people who can handle the basketball and have multiple double scores? Been able to produce and score enough and then, we struggled on the defensive end. So, then we had the challenge that group to shift their mentality of not thinking you have to score but first of all, let’s be a defensive oriented team. I think we’ve responded, started to form an identity with this group. And, hopefully they realize that.”
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