i think the brooklyn nets are going to be very interesting this year.
the talent they have on paper is obvious. but how will they use their pieces, and can they all play together?
one thing i'm quite certain of: brooklyn's actions with kyrie irving and kevin durant screening for each other off the ball are going to be very difficult to defend.
here's a beautiful set the nets ran against the boston celtics in their last preseason game:
let's break it down!
kyrie brings the ball up, passes it to kd on the wing, then heads to the corner.
spencer dinwiddie and joe harris mirror this set up on the other side of the floor.
kd then swings the ball back to the top of the key to deandre jordan:
two down screens happen simultaneously: dinwiddie "sets a pick" for joe, who rotates up, and durant sets one for kyrie:
it's not often (if ever) that two historically-elite isolation scorers play together. even rarer is the fact that one's big and one's small, but they're both three-level (at the rim, midrange, beyond the arc) scorers - which makes it very difficult to switch defensive assignments (you definitely don't want to have a small guard trying to defend kevin durant).
because of the size difference and matchups, the celtics defending kd and kyrie don't automatically switch on this screen action.
kyrie takes advantage of the overplay, fakes, and cuts backdoor for the layup. nice one-handed bounce pass delivery from deandre:
also important to give props to jordan for staring down harris initially to force marcus smart to engage and rotate upwards instead of potentially helping in the paint on kyrie's cut:
just a well-designed and perfectly executed set play all around.
a completely unrelated sidenote:
i was watching this game and couldn't help but notice that one of the refs was zooming around the court getting to her spots.
just watch this (bottom right of your screen):
that woman can downright fly!
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