Can the Brooklyn Nets find another winning formula in Kevin Durant's absence?
Since a 6-9 start, the Nets have been the hottest team in the NBA, going 21-4 with a season-long 12-game winning streak to move into second place in the Eastern Conference, just a game back of the Boston Celtics for the league's best record.
That stretch has come with Durant playing all but one game this season, a surprising road win over the Indiana Pacers without any of the team's usual starters seeing action on the second night of a back-to-back set.
Now, with Durant expected to be sidelined about a month according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski after being diagnosed with an MCL sprain in his right knee, Brooklyn must find a way to stay in the hunt for a top-three seed in the East without Durant for an extended period.
A closer look at how the Nets have gotten to this point reveals how challenging that assignment might be. Durant's fingerprints are all over Brooklyn's torrid recent stretch of play.
Brooklyn's surge had relied on KD's masterful shot-making ...
Remarkably, Brooklyn has the league's best offensive rating since Nov. 17 -- the start of that 21-4 stretch -- despite ranking in the bottom 10 of three of the four factors on offense. Per NBA Advanced Stats, the Nets are last in free throw attempt rate in that span, 29th of 30 in offensive rebound percentage and 24th in turnover rate.
It hasn't mattered.
Brooklyn is No. 1 by a wide margin in team shooting as measured by effective field-goal percentage (eFG%).
Oddly, a similar trend is evident on defense, though Brooklyn is at least average (15th) in forcing turnovers in that span. Still, the Nets' top-10 defensive rating is primarily due to the second-lowest opponent eFG%.
As ESPN's Kirk Goldsberry pointed out in a Twitter thread last week, Brooklyn is accomplishing this despite a shot diet that would be incredibly difficult for the average NBA player. He noted the Nets' shot quality on jump shots is second-lowest in the league as measured by Second Spectrum's quantified shot quality (qSQ) metric, which considers the location and type of shots as well as the distance to nearby defenders.
If we look at all shots, not just jumpers, Brooklyn moves up only to 28th in qSQ. And even if we isolate only games during the 21-4 stretch, the Nets rank 27th in shot quality. During that span, Brooklyn's plus-10.7 quantified shooter index (qSI) -- the extent to which the Nets' actual eFG% has exceeded what we'd expect from a typical NBA shooter taking the same attempts -- is nearly twice as good as any other team has posted.
Over a full season, no team during the camera-tracking era (back to 2013-14) has posted a qSI of better than 5.5%. Not coincidentally, the best mark in a season via Second Spectrum belongs to the 2020-21 Brooklyn team that led the NBA in offensive rating with Durant, Kyrie Irving and a partial season from James Harden before he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Given how much the Nets' shot-making in the last 25 games has exceeded any full season on record, some regression was inevitable. That will be exacerbated by losing Durant, the driving force in Brooklyn's historic shot-making. (Goldsberry highlighted Durant's off-the-charts midrange accuracy last month.)
Overall, Durant's plus-17% qSI would be the second-best mark for any player with at least 500 shot attempts in a season, trailing only Kyle Korver in 2014-15 (plus-17.7%). Durant's last two seasons with the Nets both rank in the top 10 on record.
... and thriving in clutch situations
Besides shot-making, the other driving force in the Nets' surge has been success in close games. Brooklyn has gone 12-2 (.857) in games decided by fewer than 10 points since Nov. 17, the league's best record in that period. Two other teams, the Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat, have 11 single-digit wins since then, but with six and seven losses, respectively. The Cleveland Cavaliers have the next best win percentage in single-digit games at 7-3 (.700).
The last of those 12 wins came without Durant for the stretch run, as he left late in the third quarter with the MCL injury and the Nets had to finish off the host Heat without him -- largely thanks to their defense. Brooklyn's only score in the last 2:39 of the game was Royce O'Neale's game-winning putback in the closing seconds, but Miami was held to four points over the last 4:18 of their one-point loss.
Naturally, the Nets tend to rely heavily on Durant and Irving to close out games. In what NBA Advanced Stats defines as "clutch" situations -- the score within five points in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime -- Irving has a 39% usage rate and Durant 37% of the team's plays. No other Brooklyn player who has seen more than 15 minutes of action has a clutch usage rate higher than 11%.
Durant has been one of the league's most efficient, high-volume clutch scorers. His 51% eFG% in these situations ranks 11th among the 29 qualifying players with a usage rate of at least 30% in the clutch. Irving is 21st among this same group at 45%.
It will be interesting to see who steps forward as a second shot creator for the Nets late in games. It's challenging for Ben Simmons to do so because of his difficulty making free throws -- he's taken just one shot attempt in a clutch situation all season.
Cam Thomas, who's been in and out of the rotation, could be an option given his fearless play. So, too, could T.J. Warren, who has played fewer than three minutes in clutch situations thus far but is Brooklyn's third-leading scorer on a per-minute basis.
With or without KD, a downturn was inevitable
One key conclusion from this analysis is that Brooklyn was going to be hard-pressed to keep playing so well even with Durant in the lineup. The Nets' shot-making and close-game success were both unsustainable, which is surely almost always true for a team playing at a 69-win pace over a full season.
The good news in Durant's absence is Brooklyn is otherwise as healthy as ever. Coach Jacque Vaughn had a full roster available each of the last two games, meaning there are plenty of options to fill Durant's 36 minutes per game.
In particular, having Warren available looms large after he missed the first 23 games rehabilitating the navicular fracture that had sidelined him since December 2020. Warren has averaged nearly 20 PPG in the NBA and can offer the shot creation the Nets badly need with a lineup filled with role players built around Durant and Irving. The big challenge for Vaughn may be avoiding relying too heavily on Warren in this stretch.
Because of the two-game separation between the East's top five teams and the rest of the pack, the Nets don't likely have to worry about slipping into a play-in spot by the time Durant returns. Still, that same gap makes it important to finish in a top-three spot in the East to avoid slugging it out with another championship contender in the opening round.
We'll see whether Brooklyn can find a formula successful enough to stay in the hunt.