NEW YORK — Brooklyn Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn has done a great job of changing how the Nets play basketball on both ends of the court. More specifically, he has changed the way that Brooklyn defends and that has led to the team’s success before Kevin Durant got hurt against the Miami Heat. However, he brought up one facet of defense that Brooklyn wasn’t able to do in Sunday’s 112-102 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“Yeah, I think we, what you talked about as a group is the fouling component,” Vaughn said after the uninspiring loss. “And so lately, we’ve been pretty good at not fouling. We knew coming into the game, SGA (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) is a guy who shoots double digits in free throws and ends up shooting 14 I think tonight. Two free throws for them in the first half and not in the second half, you know, 20, something free throws, 24 in the second half.”
The Thunder were 20-of-26 (76.9%) from the free-throw line and Gilgeous-Alexander was 11-of-14 (78.6%) from the charity stripe. Throughout the game, OKC was able to drive to the rim whenever they wanted to and it put like back line of the Nets in trouble in the second half.
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