Kenny Atkinson has said the Nets are not where they want to be, but are on the right track.
A glaring concern has been the team’s lack of crunch-time defense, which the coach pointed out after Sunday’s overtime loss at Memphis, emphasizing that multiple things need to be corrected.
“We’ve showed that we can score with anybody, but we need to get some more stops,” Spencer Dinwiddie said Tuesday. “Pretty simple, quite honestly. Continue to move the ball, get guys good shots. [Kyrie Irving has] been phenomenal, obviously. Caris [LeVert] has been really good as well. As a unit, if we stop people we’ll be fine.”
Dinwiddie said he thinks the defense will come once the Nets, who have many new faces on the court, develop more chemistry.
“I would say the way we play defense is a little bit different than where a lot of different places play defense,” Dinwiddie said. “So, implementing all the new pieces and being like, ‘Hey, we have a muck terminology or a shift terminology or a black or a blue or a red or whatever it is.’ We have all these little things that are nuanced that are sometimes based upon feel and not just a coach’s call.”
Atkinson considers the dual threat the Nets have at center to be beneficial for the team.
So far, Jarrett Allen has gotten two starts at center, in the season opener against the Timberwolves and Friday against the Knicks. But Atkinson opted to have DeAndre Jordan start against the Grizzlies.
“We kind of have a two-headed strength there,” Atkinson said. “It’s really a strength of ours. I think its matchups. It’s feel. I like what I saw last game. So we’ll see. I think we’ll continue to look at it. They’re such good guys, too. I thought Jarrett Allen was great off the bench. I thought he played really well.… So I think it’s kind of a nonissue.”
Allen, who was the Nets’ 22nd overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft, has averaged 29.7 minutes per game this season while Jordan, a key free-agent signing along with Irving and Kevin Durant, has averaged 21 minutes.
But if defense is the Nets’ issue, which of the two centers is their best bet for results?
“DJ’s a more accomplished defender of course,” Dinwiddie said. “And he’s accustomed to playing defense the way he does, he’s been an All-Defensive player for a long time. Jarrett’s also a good defender in his own right. He was one of the top five shot-blockers in the league last year. I guess there’s more similarities than differences.
“I would say DJ is just by experience a little more locked into just different plays that other people have or stuff like that and maybe calling out their plays, so that’s maybe one of the biggest differences.”
Former Net D’Angelo Russell said he knew early on he wasn’t going back to Brooklyn.
In an interview with SiriusXM Radio, Russell said he sensed a change in the attitude toward him before he was traded to the Warriors. He said he couldn’t put an exact date on when he realized the Nets were moving on to pursue Irving and Durant, but he was sure it was happening.
“I never knew exactly,” Russell said. “I just kinda … you work with these guys every day. You see the same players, you see the same coaches, you see the same trainers every day. So when they start to act a little different, you recognize it. You know that. I could feel it.
“So I just played the professional route, came in got my work in every day and just control what I could control.”
Even though the trade was a bit of surprise to Russell, he said he’s happy he ended up with Golden State. Russell is averaging 16.7 points and 6.0 assists in three games.
“So I heard all these teams mentioning me or not mentioning me, but putting me on their radar,” Russell said of how the trade came to be.
“So it was up to me to kinda make a decision on where I wanted to go. I knew I wasn’t going back to Brooklyn.
“So we were kinda waiting for KD to make his move and then this came upon, as far as ‘I might go to Golden State.’ ”