Jason Kidd might be a rookie coach, but he has employed a familiar formula to get his Nets back on track after their disastrous start to the season.
In fact, if you take a closer look at what the Nets are doing throughout their recent hot streak — which stretched to eight wins in nine games to open 2014 with their victories over the Knicks and Magic this week — what the Nets have been doing looks reminiscent of what helped propel the Knicks to their 54-win season a year ago.
With Brook Lopez out for the season following surgery to repair a fracture in his right foot, Kidd has downsized the Nets’ lineup, sliding Kevin Garnett over to center and Paul Pierce to power forward, mirroring what the Knicks did last season when they paired Tyson Chandler and Carmelo Anthony at center and power forward.
By going smaller and having more shooters on the floor — with Garnett and Andray Blatche now exclusively playing at center, the Nets always have at least four players capable of shooting effectively out to 20 feet and beyond — the Nets also have replicated the Knicks’ willingness to shoot it from deep a year ago, upping their 3-pointers attempted per game from 19.9 before the full-time switch to the smaller lineup all the way to 25.8 per game over the last nine games.
But the biggest difference going small has done is vastly improve the Nets’ defense, thanks in large part to another thing the Knicks did well and often a year ago: liberally switching on screens.
“With Shaun [Livingston] and Paul and their ability to switch, everyone’s helping one another,” Kidd said after Tuesday’s 101-90 win over the Magic. “Defensively they’re talking and [going through] the process of getting used to each other. … I think we’ve turned the corner on that.”
The reason the switching has been so effective, said everyone involved, is because of the additional speed the Nets have on the floor while not sacrificing much size at all, considering the current starting lineup employs a 6-foot-7 point guard (Shaun Livingston), 6-6 shooting guard (Alan Anderson), 6-7 small forward (Joe Johnson) and a 6-8 power forward (Pierce).
“It’s huge,” Livingston said of the way the switching has helped the Nets defensively, “because I think it takes some stress off our pick-and-roll coverages.
“[Switching] doesn’t take as much energy as fighting over screens, so I think that really helps us. But still we like to switch aggressively. We don’t like to just switch and let teams be able to dictate what they do.”
It certainly has worked. Before the switch to the small lineup went into place permanently at the start of this month, the Nets were allowing 106.7 points per 100 possessions, which ranked 29th out of 30 NBA teams. Since the switch, however, the Nets have been one of the league’s hardest teams to score against, giving up 100 points per 100 possessions, tied for fourth in the NBA over that stretch.
Because of the extra quickness on the court, the Nets have been able to rotate quicker to open shooters. Livingston’s ability to be a stopper of sorts — Kidd used him heavily against Kevin Durant of the Thunder, and with great effect to slow down Atlanta sharpshooter Kyle Korver in a pair of wins over the Hawks — also has allowed the Nets to, at times, take away the most dangerous perimeter player on the opposing team.
“It’s given us a lot of versatility,” Pierce said. “We can switch, our rotations are a lot better, a lot faster, and that’s the biggest thing.
“And then the communication is there. Everybody is on the same page … we’ve developed some defensive chemistry. I know everybody talks about offensive chemistry, but we have really good defensive chemistry now.”
The Nets also have plenty of wins this month to show for it.