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http://grantland.com/features/a-team-grows-in-brooklyn/
some of the pertinent excerpts (the whole thing's worth a read) --
The Nets have improbably righted themselves. Theyre 11-4 since the New Year behind weirdo small-ish lineups that have transformed an awful defensive team into a long-armed, turnover-generating machine. It required injuries, luck, and a midseason readjustment of the teams core defensive principles, but the Nets appear to have stumbled upon that ephemeral thing every team seeks: an identity.
Weve found our personality, says Nets GM Billy King.
You have to have a sense of structure and an identity, says Jason Kidd, the teams coach. You have to know who you are, and how youre going to play both ends. And now we do.
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The Nets are not winning because Lopez is gone, but they are playing a style hed be hard to fit into. Kidd has downsized, shifting Pierce to power forward and Garnett to center in hybrid lineups that are small up front and huge on the perimeter. The weirdness continues when Kidd goes to the bench with the positionally funky Andrei KirilenkoMirza TeletovicAndray Blatche trio.
Teams have just had no idea how to handle these offbeat looks. Bigger power forwards struggle to chase Pierce around the perimeter, and some opponents have had a wing player guard Pierce while stashing the extra big on the nonthreatening Alan Anderson. But hiding a big that way becomes much harder if Deron Williams permanently replaces Anderson in the starting lineup. As for the bench, Kirilenko and Teletovic are both tweeners, but they have wildly different skill sets, and opponents often prefer to defend them with different players than Kirilenko and Teletovic guard on the other end. Kirilenko adds doses of speed and crazy that the slowpoke Nets sorely need, and he allows Brooklyn to let Teletovic launch on offense without worrying too much about the other end. Teletovic is jacking nine 3s per 36 minutes, a launch frequency only four players have matched over a full season. The Nets, basically, are dictating matchup confusion.
Kirilenkos return to health has been essential to all of this. He can defend speedier wing players so that Teletovic doesnt have to, and he allows for the demotion of both Anderson and Jason Terry a rejiggering that lets Kidd experiment with absolutely giant lineups featuring Pierce or Joe Johnson at shooting guard.
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Ironically, Lopez figured into the reconstruction of the Nets defense, a slow and painful process that began after Sacramento blew them out in mid-November, Kidd says. The coaching staff decided after that game that they wanted to defend more aggressively. That meant two major things:
1. Kidd wanted his big men to step farther out in containing pick-and-rolls.
http://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/nets1.png
http://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/nets2.png
This is somewhere between a hard trap and a softer defense in which the big man drops back near the foul line, a style the Nets had been playing earlier in the season. The Nets call this up to touch, meaning the big man should be able to touch the screener at the start of the play, Kidd says. Lopez, a plodding dude, would seem an ill fit for this kind of style, but when the coaches used film to demonstrate the proper technique to the team, they used film of Lopez executing it. Brook can do this, Kidd says. He was doing it.
Garnett has looked more spry over the last month.
Blatche tries, but hes never going to be a good defender; that said, he has been playing better since missing four games due to personal reasons.
The other players are so close in size that they can switch on almost any pick.
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2. The rest of the defenders have taken a step closer to the middle of the floor, walling off the paint and generally scrunching things up.
http://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/nets3.png
http://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/nets4.png
Its about starting off in the right spot, Kidd says, and pulling the help defenders in on the weak side.
The goal is to close off the first option and force teams to swing the ball around the perimeter in search of something else. Its also a way the Nets can help Pierce deal with tough post-up bigs by having help defenders ready, in the paint, right behind him. Sending all five defenders toward the ball like this carries a risk: Great passing teams stocked with shooters can draw the Nets in, and then fling the ball around fast enough to beat the defense before it can recover out. The Nets are betting they can win more of those possession-by-possession battles than they lose, and they have been right over the last month.
Brooklyn is 10th in points allowed per possession since January 1, a massive jump for a team that ranked 29th up to that point, per NBA.com. They have forced turnovers on 18.6 percent of opponent possessions since January 1, tops in the league, and a number that would have led all defenses last season. About 12 percent of opponent possessions have ended via isolation plays, per Synergy Sports, a share that would easily be the leagues highest over the full season. That suggests the Nets have been successful in denying the first option, leaving teams to improvise one-on-one as the shot clock ticks down.
The Nets arent the fastest or most athletic group, but they are long, and this system is a way to leverage that length. Shaun Livingston and Joe Johnson are long for their positions, and Livingston especially has been able to sink into the paint as a helper, dart out when the offense kicks the ball back to his side of the floor, and swipe those cross-court passes opponents wrongly think are safe.
Johnson has gotten some steals this way and has generally been steady as a defender. Blatches hands are quick enough to pick a point guards pocket or reach into passing lanes at the right times. Kidd has allowed for some selective gambling, and the team as a whole has just been in tune with this scheme. They are on a string, covering for each other in sync as the ball and help assignments shift around the floor, and they have a very good sense of personnel which shooters demand a bit more attention away from the ball, and which can be ignored more blatantly. Our length is big for us, Kidd says. And we have guys with very high basketball IQs. ___
it is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. - sherlock holmes
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