NEW YORK _ Raptors head coach Nick Nurse knew the scouting report on the Nets like the back of his hand. "They have a lot of offensive firepower. They're gonna spread the ball, they shoot a lot of threes. They're gonna play a lot of screen-and-roll basketball on you," he said. "As much as you know some stuff is coming, it always seems to give you problems, and it gives you problems because they have a lot of different guys that can do it."
Nurse's words couldn't ring more true: He knew what was coming, and still couldn't stop it.
Here's the formula for good Nets basketball: move the ball on one end and clamp down on the other. It's been easier said than done this season for a team with so many injured players, but it's what worked against the Indiana Pacers on Monday, and what worked in the Nets' 101-91 win over the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday.
The win ended Toronto's 15-game winning streak and marked Brooklyn's first win against a Raptors team that had beaten them in their two previous meetings this season.
This was a team effort for the Nets. Not only did they have 27 assists on 36 made shots, five different players scored in double figures, led by LeVert (20), Joe Harris (19) and Spencer Dinwiddie (17). This is the formula for success: Against the Pacers, every Net who scored did so in double figures.
(More Sports) Nets' clash against Raptors will be anything but easy �
LeVert bounced back from a poor shooting night in Indiana to score a team-high 20 points on 10-of-20 shooting. He has scored at least 20 points in four of his last six games.
The Nets enter the All-Star break on the heels of their two best wins of the season. Had they played this way all season, they might have found themselves higher in the Eastern Conference standings.
But Brooklyn sits seventh out East amid a turbulent season that's forced them to compete short-handed at almost every juncture. They have only had Kyrie Irving healthy for 20 games _ first a right shoulder impingement that cost him 26 straight games, then a right knee sprain that's kept him sidelined since the Feb. 1 loss in Washington. Caris LeVert also missed 24 straight games with an injury to his right thumb, and Kevin Durant, of course, has not played all season while recovering from his ruptured Achilles.
The Nets can't play hero ball without their hero, but as fantastic as Irving has been this season, he has amassed a record of just 8-12 in the first half of the season. Brooklyn plays a better brand of basketball when they rely on the pass and not the player. That much has been evident in their last two games.
Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson wouldn't put a definite injury return timetable on Irving, but he will be back after the break.
Can the Nets play to Irving's strengths as an elite scorer while keeping that ball whipping around the court? It's another formula Atkinson will have to put together, one that could decide how far this team can go in the playoffs.
