This time final 12 months, the roles had been reversed.
The Nets completed the 2020-21 common season with the No. 2 seed, whereas the Boston Celtics defeated the Washington Wizards within the first recreation of the play-in event to safe the East’s No. 7 spot.
The Nets, with a roster headlined by Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden, made fast work of an outmatched Celtics staff. Brooklyn gained the sequence, 4-1, solely surrendering the primary recreation on Boston’s house court docket.
However issues have modified since that fateful sequence. Boston’s mastermind Brad Stevens moved right into a entrance workplace position and poached Nets’ lead assistant coach Ime Udoka. Udoka helped rework the Celtics into the league’s prime defensive staff. He unlocked Marcus Good as a professional Defensive Participant of the Yr candidate and developed Jayson Tatum’s playmaking and on-court management expertise. Udoka has taken a fringe playoff contender and legitimized them.
And, for the Nets, now the shoe is on the opposite foot.
“They’ve obtained six or seven new gamers [since last year’s playoff series],” Durant stated within the days main as much as Sunday’s Recreation 1. “I’m not even desirous about final season. One in every of our coaches is their coach now.”
This time round, it’s the Nets who endured the league’s play-in event, discarding the Cleveland Cavaliers to cement their standing because the East’s seventh seed.
It’s the Nets who face the unenviable activity of taking part in extra video games in Boston than in Brooklyn, extra video games in entrance of the league’s most hostile playoff surroundings, with followers who reserve their vitriol for Irving, who as soon as decreed his love for Boston solely to depart for Brooklyn.
It’s the Nets who drew the league’s No. 1 protection, and the league’s finest staff general within the closing 15 video games of the season, as their first-round playoff matchup.
And it’s the Nets who instantly discover themselves as underdogs — or do they? — in yet one more championship-or-bust season derailed by components nicely outdoors their management.
“I believe that we do [identify as underdogs], and we don’t,” head coach Steve Nash stated after Nets apply Saturday. “If we had been collectively for the 12 months, we wouldn’t be seventh, and so we wouldn’t be an underdog.”
The Nets certainly don’t really feel like underdogs. They had been the No. 1 staff within the Jap Convention with a 27-15 report earlier than a Jan. 15 MCL sprain sidelined Durant a month and a half, sending the Nets on an 11-game shedding streak.
By the point Durant returned, the Nets had been in play-in territory, struggling to maintain the staff from ending the season in tenth place.
That’s the truth of Brooklyn’s season: When wholesome, when entire, they’ve been just about unbeatable. They haven’t been entire, nevertheless, all season.
Not with Irving (unvaccinated) ineligible to play till Jan. 5 and ineligible to play at house till March 27. Not with Harden off form, unmotivated and finally disgruntled sufficient to power his strategy to Philly on the commerce deadline. Not with Joe Harris needing ankle surgical procedure a month and alter into the common season. And, after all, not with out Durant, who might have deserved extra MVP consideration solely based mostly on the Nets’ tailspin as soon as the damage put him on ice.
“I really feel like our season was derailed by my damage,” Durant stated on April 4. “I’m not taking a look at it like we’re simply not basketball staff. There wasn’t numerous continuity with me and Kyrie out of the lineup. That’s simply what it's. Once we’re all on the ground collectively, I like what we’ve obtained.”
Today, Tatum is starting to seem like he belongs within the MVP dialog. In Yr 5, Tatum is averaging 27 factors, eight rebounds and 4.4 assists per recreation. Of their March 6 assembly — a recreation the Nets began the identical gamers they’ll probably begin everything of this first-round sequence — Tatum scored 54 factors, and all 4 different Celtics starters hit double figures.
Durant scored 37 however solely obtained 19 from Irving — in his first recreation at Boston’s TD Backyard all season. The Celtics held on to win by six.
“I do know their recreation,” Udoka stated earlier than tipoff that night time. “It’s not about their units, offensively. It’s about who they're. They’re not working something difficult. It’s get them (Durant and Irving) the ball, and allow them to do what they do.”
That 54-point outburst is on the core of the Nets’ recreation planning for Boston. Do they permit Tatum to go nuclear whereas making an attempt to neutralize these round him? Or do they power Jaylen Brown, Good, Derrick White and firm to play above their means whereas making an attempt to take Tatum utterly out of the sport?
“That’s the crux of it,” Nash stated. ”What would you slightly abdomen? Do you slightly give Jayson extra alternative versus over committing to him and permitting different guys to have quote unquote simpler motion?”
What would Nash slightly abdomen?
“Oh,” he stated with an enormous smile. “That’s not for me to debate.”
Neither is Ben Simmons, the star level ahead acquired within the Harden deal who might be accessible to play within the first spherical — relying on whose phrases you imagine.
Whereas newsbreakers Adrian Wojnarowski, Shams Charania and Brian Windhorst have every reported elevated optimism round Simmons making his debut in-between Video games 4 and 6 of the primary spherical, Nash has remained tight-lipped concerning the progress Simmons has made. Nash on Friday, for instance, stated Simmons “hasn’t achieved something but” practice-wise, just for Wojnarowski to report on ESPN Saturday morning that Simmons has been working and capturing for over every week.
“I believe clearly he’s enhancing,” Nash advised reporters after apply on Saturday, “however I do not know if he’s getting near play or not.”
Even when he can play by Recreation 4, Simmons gained’t be 100%, he gained’t be in recreation form, and he gained’t have any basketball beneath his belt after sitting the entrance half of the season in Philadelphia, then struggling a herniated disk throughout his ramp-up in Brooklyn.
Simmons’ standing is a microcosm for why the Nets could also be underdogs, even when they've two of the three finest gamers on the ground always. They ended the common season on a four-game profitable streak — 5 when you embrace the play-in — and winners of 12 of their final 17 video games, however the Celtics ended their common season with metrics that counsel they’re the very best staff in all of basketball.
The Celtics may have ducked the Nets by resting their starters within the regular-season finale. Whereas the Bucks took that route, Boston pummeled the Memphis Grizzlies by 29 to cement a first-round matchup with a professional championship contender.
So does the No. 7 seed make the Nets underdogs, or is their seeding a facade? Are they actually a No. 1 or 2 seed taking part in towards a staff that wouldn’t be seeded as excessive had it not been for Brooklyn’s midseason meltdown?
“Now that we're collectively I really feel like we've a capability to beat folks for certain,” Nash stated. “However the continuity is that piece and we simply haven’t had numerous time collectively. So making an attempt to beat that in a brief time frame is our problem.”
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