The early portion of this season looked promising for the Nets, as they went 4-2 over the first six games. However, the Nets most recent Western road trip featured losses in Phoenix, Golden State, and Portland, followed by a very disappointing home loss Monday night to the Miami Heat, who were playing without Dwayne Wade and Luol Deng. The Nets now stand at 4-6 with a matchup against the Milwaukee Bucks tonight.
The Nets have a ton of problems on the offensive side of the ball, and no one improvement is going to fix that. One huge area that has been failing the team is the play of its big men. Brook Lopez and Mason Plumlee have both not lived up to expectations and it has prevented the Nets from having any interior presence on offense. Even though both still have a lot of time to turn their season around, it’s clear that the Nets miss the production they used to get from Andray Blatche.
Blatche played the last two seasons with the Nets, averaging 10.8 points off the bench, playing roughly 20 minutes per game. What was great about Blatche’s style of play is how well it complemented Lopez’s style. Whereas Lopez works mainly with his back-to-the-basket, relying on great positioning, strength and post hooks, Blatche could break his defender down off the dribble and use guard-like skills and masterful fakes to get by his defenders.
His game isn’t like that of any other big man in the league, let alone any other big man on the team. That’s why the Nets relied heavily on Blatche as a top scoring option off the bench.
To see how heavily the Nets relied Blatche, I looked up his usage percentage. Usage percentage is a stat that determines the percentage of a team’s offensive possessions that a player uses while on the court. Lakers star Kobe Bryant consistently finished near the top of the league in usage percentage in previous years, with his percentage usually between 32 and 36 percent.
Blatche’s usage percentage in 2012-2013 was 26.3 percent and in 2013-2014 it was 25.2. For a bench player, that is a very high number. In fact, Deron Williams had a usage percentage of 21.9 percent last year, roughly three percentage points lower than Blatche’s. Blatche was a focal part of the offense whenever he was on the floor.
Dray wasn’t the perfect player, but he was an excellent option off the bench for the Nets and his scoring ability was indisputable. Even if Lopez and Plumlee do improve, Blatche offered the Nets a different dimension to the offense that they simply don’t have anymore.
After opting out of his contract, the Nets chose not to resign Blatche, who is currently playing in China. He has said previously on Twitter that he’d be more than willing to come back so it’s up to the Nets whether they want to bring him back or not.
*All stats retrieved from www.nba.com/stats*
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