One of the many problems the Brooklyn Nets faced in their opening round playoff series with the Atlanta Hawks was poor interior defense when starting center Brook Lopez was off the floor. Al Horford, Paul Millsap and DeMarre Carroll–when they weren’t draining outside shots–feasted on porous defense at the rim that was hampered by a disappointing performance from Mason Plumlee.
Coach Lionel Hollins–due to Plumlee’s poor series–was forced to stretch Lopez’ minutes far beyond where he would have liked to. Then, when Brook got in foul trouble, he had to put Mason down in the paint on an island or throw in rarely used Jerome Jordan, who is a shot-blocking presence but has limited ability in other aspects of the game.
In the 2013-14 playoffs, then-Nets coach Jason Kidd–with Lopez unavailable due to a broken foot–effectively used the combo of Plumlee and Andray Blatche to combat the Raptors’ and then the Heat’s frontcourts. But, the Nets let Blatche go play in China last offseason and, outside of Jordan, never picked up another big man for the bench.
Clearly, that will be a major need for Billy King this summer, and it’s a need he probably won’t be able to fill with Brooklyn’s No. 29 and 41 overall selections in this month’s draft. Unless he can swing a trade, which seems unlikely considering the Nets’ extreme lack of salary flexibility, he’ll have to scour the free agent market for a cheap pickup.
One name he might consider is Lavoy Allen, who spent this past season with the Pacers but was drafted by and played his 2.5 NBA years with the 76ers. Allen, a second-round pick in 2011, was selected by Philly–his hometown team–a year after King left the organization to come to the Nets, but undoubtedly is someone the Nets’ GM is familiar with.
Allen–who was sent to Indiana with Evan Turner for Danny Granger in February 2014–signed an option-free, one-year, $948K deal with the Pacers last July so he’ll be an unrestricted free agent this offseason, and a relatively inexpensive one at that. The 26-year-old–who shared a locker room with Thaddeus Young for a few seasons–is a solid defender and rebounder that doesn’t have much shooting range, but has shot at a 48 percent clip between 3-10 feet from the basket in his career.
The Temple product’s offensive game doesn’t get much more complex than layups, dunks, hook shots and the occasional jumper, but that’s not what the cap-strapped Nets would need from him. They would just need 10-15 minutes a game to spell Lopez and/or Plumlee while providing some value at both ends of the floor.
He produced a career-high 1.6 defensive win shares in the 2014-15 season in just over 1000 minutes in a part-time role with the Pacers. For comparative purposes, in more than twice as many minutes last year, Brook Lopez only posted 2.2 defensive win shares, which takes pace and defensive rating into account. As a bench player who would mostly go up against other teams’ reserves, Allen would be more than helpful to a Nets team lacking discernible frontcourt depth. They could do much, much worse than getting a player like him for $1 million for the 2015-16 campaign.
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