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| Jason Kidd hasn't worn a tie yet in 2014, and the Nets haven't lost a game either. Correlation or causation? |
After a highly disappointing two months to begin the 2013-14 season, the Brooklyn Nets and embattled coach Jason Kidd needed some sort of spark to turn around their campaign.
They lost Brook Lopez on December 20th to a broken foot, meaning they would be without their starting center and scoring leader for the rest of the season. They were sitting at 10-21 after getting destroyed on the road by the Spurs on New Years' Eve for the 2nd-straight year. They were in last place in the Atlantic Division, looking up at an entire division, conference, and league from the cellar. Most importantly, they were getting ripped by fans the media for a perceived lack of effort evidenced through a bunch of terrible blowout losses to good and bad opponents alike.
However, seemingly in the nick of time, the Nets hit their stride as the new year was ushered in and have rattled off a five-game winning streak in 2014. This all started with a huge upset win over the Thunder on December 2nd, just like last season, in which Brooklyn came back from a big double-digit deficit to win in front of a shocked Oklahoma City crowd. Then, the Nets came home to Brooklyn and just kept on winning, sweeping a four-game homestand–in which their opponents never cracked the 100-point mark–that concluded last night against Miami.
In order, Brooklyn took down the Cavaliers, Hawks, Warriors, and Heat (2OT) in games that were all close and had leads that the Nets–who blew leads left and right in 2013–preserved beautifully. It didn't even matter that Deron Williams (ankle) missed the last three games, all against teams with winning records, because in his absence, other Nets like Shaun Livingston, Paul Pierce, and Joe Johnson stepped up to the place and filled the void he left. A fail-safe sign of a contending team: the ability to make up for injuries with production.
The season-high winning streak isn't all because of significantly-improved play from basically every Nets player–which has a lot do with it, though. Kidd himself deserves some credit too, as a main issue with the Nets of November and December was the lack of adaptation made at halftime to counter-act the other team. Early in the season, 3rd quarters used to bury Brooklyn in massive holes because Kidd wasn't making the necessary changes at halftime to prepare his team for the last two quarters of the game.
Now, it's pretty clear the rookie head coach is learning how to actually perform his job to the best of his ability. His team has won three of its last five 3rd quarters (on the five-game winning streak, not a coincidence) and has playing great basketball in the 2nd half in general. NBA games aren't won in the first six minutes; they're won in the last six. Finally, Brooklyn is closing out games in the 3rd and 4th quarters, which is directly translating into wins.
The offseason experiment that Billy King made–which looked to be failing when the season began–seems to be paying off after more than thirty games of pure mediocrity from Brooklyn's collection of All-Stars, future Hall-of-Famers, glue guys, and young players just finding their way around the NBA.
The stars–Joe, Deron, and pre-injury Brook–have, when healthy, been great and have scored in bunches when it's their turn to. The vets–Pierce, KG, Terry, Kirilenko, Joe Johnson–have their legs under them and are beginning to hit shots and play the defense they've displayed throughout their entire career. The journeymen–Livingston, Alan Anderson, Blatche, Reggie, Mirza–know exactly what their roles are and are playing suit, performing the tasks they were brought to Brooklyn to compete, be it grabbing rebounds, bringing the ball up the floor, or just hitting shots.
Then, you sprinkle in some rookies to that mix and you have an entire squad of players that are working in unison to beat the best teams the NBA has to offer. I think this is what Mikhail Prokhorov had in mind when he bought this team.
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