Another contender traveled to Brooklyn on Tuesday to take on the Eastern Conference favorites, and another contender fell to the power of their big three. This time, it was the Los Angeles Clippers who tried to hold the unstoppable Nets in check, failing in a 124-120 defeat at the hands of the NBA’s top offensive trio. Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden combined for 90 points in the victory and came back from a 12-point deficit in the first half to take over the game and get inside two of the Philadelphia 76ers for the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.
In any case, the Clippers can leave New York with the satisfaction of holding their own in the stick competition. The Clippers started the season with big wins against the Lakers and Nuggets, but have played a weak schedule since then. Now, over 20 games into the season, they’ve seen where they face one of the teams they might have to beat to win the championship. Here’s what they, and the Nets, can take away from Tuesday’s titanic battle.
1. Brooklyn’s Formula
Ignore the hiccups against Washington and Cleveland. Ignore the gaudy point totals of the opposing points, the season-high individual scores of opponents and the errors in the late game. Brooklyn has now played three playoff teams since taking over from James Harden, and a formula is starting to present itself: Keep the game in the 120s, not the 140s, get offended efficiently by all three stars, and trust one of them will break out with a 40-point blast or monster triple-double.
That’s essentially what happened to the Clippers. Irving led the way with 39 points, but Durant and Harden together shot 64 percent of the field. The Brooklyn defense has performed relatively better against good fouls (ranked 20th against top-10 scoring units since acquiring Harden, according to Cleaning the Glass) than against mediocre (dead last) and bottom 10 opponents (23rd). That suggests that effort can, to some extent, bring the Nets to competence, and so can their best opponents.
On paper, this is what the Nets would probably want a final game to look like. Their offense as a whole is defense-proof. No team will ever lock all three of their stars at once. They don’t have to be good at defense. They just have to be good enough to complement a foul that gives them a shot against any opponent, and that was on Tuesday.
2. Big or small?
When Brooklyn played against Milwaukee in its first possible playoff preview of the Harden era, it spent 38 of the possible 48 minutes on DeAndre Jordan in an attempt to scare off Giannis Antetokounmpo at the basket. It worked, but Steve Nash remained flexible. Jordan only played 16 minutes against the Clippers while Jeff Green got the remaining 32 in the middle.
In theory, the plan worked. The Nets won the game, and even with Green as their little five, they more than held their own inside. The two teams were level with 44 paint points each and Brooklyn won the returning fight 44-39. The Clippers are not a particularly paint-focused team. Most of their shots are jumpers, and shifting is usually the best defense against such fouls. But playing that way allowed Kawhi Leonard to start looking for ideal matchups quite early on. He managed to find Irving and Joe Harris on several early holdings as the Clippers built their lead in the first half, and that strategy will be a common strategy Brooklyn should expect against elite playoffs in the playoffs.
That’s not to say the little ball is negative on balance. The benefits of the distance aside, it makes it much easier for the Nets to park Harden defensively into the post, where he’s most comfortable and made a huge impact on Tuesday. But the Nets won Jordan’s minutes by six and lost Green’s by two. That’s not a huge difference, but it indicates the difficulty of switching identities. If the Nets can’t control any approach, how will they split the difference with teams that can punish both?
3. Who is ready for prime time?
Each Nets starter played a minimum of 32 minutes in this game. Four Clippers starters did, and Marcus Morris gave them 31 minutes off the bench. Both teams held their own for life when their reserves had to play. No Clippers reserve had a positive point difference. Besides Jordan, Brooklyn’s backups only attempted five shots.
The Lakers won the championship last season for a variety of reasons, but meeting their minimum wage was one of the biggest. Taking Dwight Howard, Markieff Morris and Rajon Rondo off the junkyard allowed them to play through the postseason without worrying about spending minutes outright liabilities.
The Clippers are getting closer and closer. Nic Batum has been a revelation and Reggie Jackson is slowly starting to return to his Detroit form. The Nets still have a way to go. They’ve allowed Landry Shamet to play through his struggles, but he’s still floating around 30 percent from behind the arch. Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot has been too inconsistent, and while Bruce Brown’s defense is badly needed, he’s shot less than 20 percent on corner-3s so far this season.
The Nets currently only trust six players. The Clippers go deeper than that, but it’s not exactly encouraging to see Luke Kennard play just four minutes in such a big game. Brooklyn has the time and resources to improve its bank. The Clippers can reasonably hope that their answers are internal. But right now, both rely very heavily on their starters to win games. That may work in the regular season, but champions will need role-players like Rondo and Howard to perform if they’re going to take four rounds.
4. Don’t forget who the Clippers missed
Not to rain during the Brooklyn parade, but this wasn’t quite the possible final preview we were hoping for, largely due to an absence. Irving scored 39 points in this game, but the absence of Patrick Beverley, an All-Defense point guard, probably contributed to that. The Clippers are more than 10 points per 100 belongings better with Beverley on the floor (101.7 points per 100 belongings allowed) than with him off (111.8).
That’s not to say Beverley would close Irving. Nobody can do that. But rarely do All-Defense selections allow for 39 points on 15-of-23 shots. In a game with such thin margins, Beverley, making Irving work a little harder, or at least giving the Clippers more matchup versatility and limiting Jackson’s minutes on the floor, could have made all the difference. Ultimately, in the late season, the Nets will encounter a team with three high-quality perimeter stoppers. Boston has three between Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. Philadelphia has three between Ben Simmons, Matisse Thybulle and Danny Green. Milwaukee has never been willing to put their best players in this way, but Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday would all pose problems for the Brooklyn stars. We still haven’t seen how the Nets would handle such a defensive depth. They’ve had at least one exploitable matchup in all of their games so far, but that’s going to change eventually, and it will be impossible to capture Brooklyn’s playoff potential before seeing how they handle it.