MIAMI — After losing stars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, Brooklyn’s offense was always going to be a work in progress coming into this season.
With their preseason finale Wednesday in Miami, their last chance to work out the kinks before the games actually count, it remains to be seen how much progress they’ve made. And how much more work they need.
“We have a long way to go as a team, for sure … which is OK,” Nic Claxton admitted. “If there’s a time to figure these things out, it’s now, in the preseason. But it’s a fine line, because you want to be sharp. We only have one more preseason game, so Miami on Wednesday is a pretty [big] game for us.”
If a team wants to test its offensive cohesion, Miami will provide a good gauge.
Erik Spoelstra’s defense will expose any lack of cohesion on the Nets’ side.
And there has been plenty.
They didn’t so much lose 127-119 to the Sixers as fumble the game away.
Hesitation led to frustration, committing 27 turnovers to give away 35 points.
“I talked about being decisive with the basketball,” said Jacque Vaughn, who preached not just settling for the first action but getting into the second.
Vaughn staggered Ben Simmons and Spencer Dinwiddie’s minutes, Simmons committing eight turnovers by himself.
“There’s spurts where we look great; there’s spurts where we look like we don’t know each other,” Simmons said. “We’re trying to figure each other out and I’m trying to figure out how we’re gonna play, where we need to be.
“For me personally … if I make mistakes, it’s OK. I’d rather learn off my mistakes. … I had some turnovers early, misreading where the defenders were and tried to correct those things throughout the game.”
After three giveaways in the first 4:31 to put the Nets in a 14-5 hole, Simmons did settle in.
And it was his pace that has created open looks for the Nets and compensated for the loss of Joe Harris, Seth Curry and Yuta Watanabe.
Simmons had nine assists Monday as the Nets went 17 of 31 from 3.
But too often they hesitated and let the defense recover, passing up clean catch-and-shoot looks only to drive into a crowd for a turnover.
“It’s a unique style, his pace and the angles he plays with. So we’re going to grow together, understand those angles, whether it’s him playing big-big pick-and-roll,” Vaughn said. “So things we’ll continue to work on.
“The catch-and-shoot without going off the bounce is huge for us, because Ben is going to create the closeout. Ben’s going to create the advantage for us, and we don’t want to give that advantage back by over-dribbling and getting back into the paint where they have a chance to make rotations. So those catch-and-shoot 3s, we want to encourage. … If you turn those down, those can turn into turnovers.”
Both Dinwiddie and Cam Thomas have excelled as spot shooters this preseason, and Royce O’Neale and Dorian Finney-Smith are known as such.
But Vaughn must figure the best way to stagger Simmons and Dinwiddie’s minutes at the point.
“We had segments of the game where we have both guys in together, and we had them being the lead guard at separate times. We’ll continue to experiment with that. A big piece of that is having the right people around him,” Vaughn said. “So we’ll continue to have those both. We have to have them play together: That’s just part of it. But we also grow [with] them playing separately as well.”
It’s a sad statement that Dinwiddie and Simmons were each minus-5, and every other starter was minus-10 or worse versus the Sixers.
But in their 16:24 together, they were actually “just” minus-1.
They were down 14-5 when Dinwiddie checked out 3:57 into the game Monday.
They were plus-4 playing together the first 5:33 after the half, and again in the fourth before leaving with 5:06 to play.
“I’ve been going against Spencer for a while, so it’s a great opportunity to play with him,” Simmons said. “I respect him a lot and love his game. He’s a great leader. So, we just got to figure it out.”
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