Despite getting the faster pace he wanted, Nets interim coach Tony Brown had begged for better ball movement. He had preached the ball can’t stick in the point guard’s hands while everybody stood around and watched the offense stagnate.
Then, he took matters into his own hands and took the ball out of the guards’. He tasked Brook Lopez and especially veteran Joe Johnson — essentially a point forward — to make the crucial decisions in crunch time. The result was Sunday’s shocking 116-106 upset of Oklahoma City. Now they have to bottle that and come up with an encore Tuesday against Miami.
“Obviously the ball is going to find Brook, but late in the game, going through Brook and Joe was huge,” Brown said. “Let them be the decision-makers. Brook made some great passes out of the post. When he was getting double-teamed, he found [Bojan Bogdanovic] on the weak side for a 3. Those kind of things, as he gets better with touches late in games, he’ll start to see it better, and we’ll get some good opportunities.”
Lopez got plenty of great opportunities against the Thunder, not only scoring a season-high 31 points but drawing double-teams and making the pass that often led to an assist. Oh, and the Nets piled up 24 of those to just 11 turnovers.
“It’s more frustrating than anything because we’re capable,” point guard Donald Sloan said. “We can play like that night in and night out. But us deciding to do it, that’s the thing. When we make up in our mind that we’re going to play like that every night, that’s when we’ll be inching our way to be that much better.”
Sloan had averaged 7.5 assists in his prior eight games — playing well since taking the job from ineffective Shane Larkin — but all too often, he’d had to drive too deep into the defense and had no good passing opportunity, getting swallowed up for a turnover or a bad possession. On Sunday, he had two assists, but seven different Nets had multiple assists, led by Johnson’s six.
“[Sloan and Larkin] play well at times with the ball in their hands. They make plays,” Brown said. “But I’m going to give Joe a chance to have the decision-making in his hands in regards to throwing the ball into Brook or some kind of pick-and-roll with Joe and Brook involved. Not to say these guys won’t handle it, but [Johnson and Lopez] have been there before. Joe’s got great experience and poise, so I just feel better about going through those guys late.”
With good reason. Johnson’s court vision and composure took pressure off both Sloan and Larkin, who had four assists, no turnovers and his first good game in weeks, while Lopez had nine points in the fourth quarter to put Oklahoma City away.
“Whenever you can have multiple people running action, that just benefits the whole team,” Sloan said. “When you isolate it to one person trying to do the most or one person that’s penetrating, trying to kick, it limits you offensively, and that’s where we’ve been for the past few games. That’s Joe. That’s what he does. He’s like a big point guard. I’ve known that.
“Anytime you can get him handling the ball, making plays, that makes the offense better. Me and him being out there together, you got two ballhandlers, two guys that can initiate offense, create, two guys that have capable vision at finding guys. He has experience, the height, the strength to do all that, so it’s a big key for us. If that’s what it’s going to take to get him going, for him to handle it more, come off pick-and-rolls and make decisions, I think we’re going to stick to that.’’