The Brooklyn Nets are a mess on defense, but they’re one of the best teams at an overlooked category.
What’s this? Two Brooklyn Nets posts in under a week? That’s right, because bad teams are often ripe for weirdness. The Nets had no plan to win games this season, instead opting to tank their season away and build through the draft.
As a result, Nic Claxton is leading the team in assists, they boast the worst defense in the NBA, and only have a single win, against the nearly-as-hapless Indiana Pacers. Buckle in, Brooklyn, it’s going to be a long season!
The Nets rank 29th in the NBA in opponent points per game and have the single worst defensive rating in the NBA. They allow their opponents to shoot 41.0% from deep and allow 58.2 points in the paint per game. Both are the worst marks in the league.
Brooklyn’s defense is utterly woeful, but they seem to have mastered one key area.
Brooklyn Nets Have Excellent Midrange Defense
The midrange is a dying shot. Players like Kevin Garnett, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Dirk Nowitzki are out of the league, and teams aren’t settling for the long two anymore.
Instead, 3-point rate seemingly improves every season, and shot charts look less like an acne-riddled teen and more like a well-thought-out map of an NBA court.
If this year’s Brooklyn Nets played in the early 2000s, when the midrange was king, they’d be the best defensive team in the entire league. Despite having the worst defense across the board, they hold their opponents to the fourth-lowest midrange field goal percentage and allow the third-fewest points in the same area.
Most of the other worst defensive teams in the league can’t say the same!
Of course, it helps that the Nets employ five traffic cones on defense at any given moment. Instead of settling for midrange shots, teams can simply get to the basket or knock down wide-open 3s. The Nets’ mastery in one area is clearly the result of shortcomings elsewhere.
While the Nets play an outdated style of defense, their offense is closer to average than their record suggests. They are a top-ten 3-point shooting team in the NBA, making 13.9 buckets every night. On top of that, they are perfectly average midrange shooters, taking neither too many nor too few.
Defending against the midrange clearly doesn’t equate to wins, or at least not in the Nets’ case. The top midrange defense teams are all over the place, ranging from the successful New York Knicks to the underperforming Boston Celtics.
The only team to allow opponents to shoot over 50% from midrange—the Portland Trail Blazers—boast a middle-of-the-road 13th defensive rating. They also allow the most points in the midrange.
Are this year’s Nets the worst team ever? Nope! They excel in one area and one area only. It’s outdated and ineffective, but it’s hard to score from around 16 feet against the Nets. You’d be much better off waltzing to the basket.
It’s not like they have anyone who can stop you.
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