PHOENIX — It’s nearly three weeks into the season, but the struggling Nets are back in training-camp mode.
With their offense sputtering like an old car with a bad carburetor, coach Kenny Atkinson went back to basics in Sunday’s practice. It was Nets 101.
“[It was] just good to get in the gym, No. 1. We’re struggling on offense,” Atkinson said. “We just talked about our overall philosophy. We went through big-picture philosophy, which was film; and we walked through our whole offense, just to get them back to training-camp mode.
“It was about the details of our offense, how we’re outletting the ball, how we’re getting up the court, where our spacing is, almost like training-camp mentality. We’re missing a lot of the details. … I just felt we had to address that, and it was a long coach’s clinic by me, which I don’t love to do, but I felt like we needed it.”
With back-to-back games Monday in Phoenix and Tuesday in Denver, then another set Friday in Portland and Saturday in Utah, the Nets won’t be able to practice Wednesday or next Sunday. That leaves them with precious little time to work out the kinks in their offense — and there are many.
“[Atkinson] was just showing us different variations of it. We’ve been a little stagnant, so just showing us different options,” Caris LeVert said. “We have a read-and-react offense. We were doing the same sort of things and defenses were locking into that, so he was just showing us different options on what we can do, different ways to getting into our sets.”
The refresher course was even more needed with injuries having forced the Nets to shuffle lineups.
“Yeah, just making sure we know what to do, where to be,” Quincy Acy said. “We’ve had some injuries, so we had some different lineups out there, and sometimes guys don’t know where to be. Just making sure everybody’s on the same page.
“We definitely used [this road trip] to jell and come together off the court and that’s going to help us on the court, just trusting each other, defensively and offensively as well. We’re going through a tough stretch right now. But it’s early, and we’ve got to figure it out.”
After averaging 121.2 points with a 109.7 offensive rating in a promising 3-2 start, those figures have plummeted to 105.8 points and a 97.5 rating in their four-game losing skid.
“Sometimes we get stagnant, stray away from team ball. If we put together a 48-minute game where we share the ball the whole time, we’ll be a whole different team,” Trevor Booker said. “If we come out and play our game and share the ball like we’re capable of, I’m sure we can come out with a win.
“In the wins we’ve gotten, we probably had 30 assists. If we want to win we’ve got to get back to those ways … to be more efficient with our shots, drive the ball and kick it, just play team ball.”
It was actually an average of 24.2 assists through their first five games, never notching fewer than 20. They’ve had 19 or less in half of the games on their current losing skid. They’ve got to get back to not just moving the ball, but cutting harder, screening harder on all those staggers. In short, get back to playing their way to snap this skid.
“It’s pretty important,” Booker said. “We definitely don’t want to go back home without any wins on the road trip. It’ll be very important for our confidence to get a couple of wins.”