The Brooklyn Nets suffer another defeat at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks 110-99 moving their record to a lowly 1-3 in this still very young NBA Season. Giannis Antetokounmpo was more that the Nets could handle is he took over the game in the 2nd half and finished the game with 43 points to go along with 14 rebounds, and 5 assists. Giannis seemed motivated being matched up with Brooklyn’s Ben Simmons who played a decent game and tried attacking Antetokounmpo early in the game. In the 2nd half Giannis slashed to the basket for lay up, after lay up and the Nets could do nothing about it, and no coaching adjustments were made. Brooklyn coach Steven Nash was actually ejected late in the 3rd Quarter as Milwaukee was beginning to make it’s run.
Nash’s inability to make in game adjustments and the fact that the Net’s offense looks so stagnant at times with so much firepower is very problematic, and something the needs to be figured out ASAP before the season begins to get away from this team. As a fan watching the game on ESPN personally after listening to announcer Jeff Van Gundy call an excellent game with such great basketball knowledge if I was Nets management I would be making the call to see if Van Gundy is interested in the head coaching job. Nash got ejected in the 3rd Quarter and looks like a man who does not want to be coaching this team. Some coaches get ejected on purpose to rally the team, some coaches get ejected because of a temper. From my perspective Nash acted out on purpose to get ejected because he really doesn’t want to be the coach of this team, and would be happy to get fired and still walk away with a FAT paycheck.
The key bright spot I see in the Nets offense moving forward, and was even mentioned by Van Gundy is the Nets high efficiency of running their offense through Ben Simmons. With the amount of firepower on this Nets squad Simmons needs to be playing a Draymond Green role with this team on both sides of the floor, and offensively that means running the offense through Simmons and running Irving and Durant off of dribble hand offs and getting them clean looks. We saw against Milwaukee when the Nets did this and were patient they were playing good basketball. It is when the offense is stagnant running iso through Durant with everyone else just standing around, that makes it predictable and easy to target in on 1 individual.
In time, as Simmons begins to get back use to game speed, and game shape he will only improve and the Net’s offense will only improve if they stop the iso heavy system. We saw Simmons attempt to get downhill early in the ballgame but not too much later in the game. This is another key moving forward, Simmons being aggressive and getting down hill looking for lay ups and dunks.
