NEW YORK —The last time the Nets won a playoff series, their best players were on the brink of retirement, and their odds at winning it all were negligible at best.
Fast forward seven years and the same franchise has three of the league’s premier players, smack dab in the middle of their prime, a trio of likely future Hall of Famers poised to lead Brooklyn to championship glory that has evaded the franchise since its days in New Jersey.
Brooklyn is the league’s new epicenter of basketball, a fact crystallized by their handling of the Boston Celtics in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. Their 123-109 Game 5 victory over Boston at Barclays Center on Monday completed the gentleman’s sweep of a short-handed but worthy first-round opponent.
But it wasn’t perfect. Far from it.
In fact, there may be more concerns for this Nets team looming than reasons to be excited for a potential championship run. The reasons to be excited are on the backs of the jerseys of their three best players. James Harden, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant combined for 83 points on Tuesday night. Harden led the way with a 34-point triple-double on hot second-half shooting, plus 10 rebounds and 10 assists.
Irving added 25 points and Durant 24.
The Nets, however, don’t match up well against teams with dominant big men. In the face of adversity, they rely far too heavily on isolation ball, despite having three of the league’s best isolation scorers. They don’t play their most experienced and highest-paid big man because of his shortcomings in mobility. And they don’t defend for the full 48 minutes of a basketball game.
The Nets did nothing in the first round but what they were supposed to, and they got off easy. The Celtics’ odds at winning the series plummeted when Jaylen Brown suffered a season-ending wrist injury before the playoffs began. Those odds then tanked below zero after Boston’s win in Game 3, the final playoff game for both Kemba Walker (knee) and center Robert Williams (ankle), who recorded nine blocks in Game 1.
That left the Celtics handicapped, short three of their six most impactful players in the face of possibly the three best scorers and playmakers to ever play on the same team. This series needing five games only gave the Milwaukee Bucks, who Brooklyn sees in Round 2, more real-time intel to use in forming their game plan.
That intel is going to read as follows: struggles to defend the paint, struggles to crash the glass, can be baited into iso ball, streaky on defense.
And still, these Nets are championship contenders. And still, they’re championship favorites.
To take advantage of Brooklyn’s weaknesses, teams will have to solve a star-studded riddle. How do you slow down Durant, Harden or Irving when overhelping on any one of the three creates an opening for a shooter like Joe Harris, or a rim finisher like Bruce Brown?
One thing’s for sure: The Bucks, who own one of the NBA’s best defenses, have been taking notes. What remains to be seen is whether those notes will help them past the test.
