Brooklyn Nets: Important trends through first 3 weeks

As the 2018-19 season adds some meat to its bones, let’s take a look at what’s making the Brooklyn Nets the way they are through three weeks.

The 2018-19 NBA season is still young, but trends are starting to develop around the league. The Brooklyn Nets are getting more popular thanks to Caris LeVert‘s Most Improved Player Award campaign and Jarrett Allen‘s block party (limited invites), while the team overall continues to blow hot starts.

How are the Nets building up such leads to begin with, and how are they blowing so many? How good is this team, really? There are discernible statistics that answer such questions.

For starters, LeVert’s scorching start to the season looks far from a fluke. His 12.7 Player Impact Estimate, an overall value statistic from NBA.com, ranks him 77th in the association. Although he’s only shooting 33.3 percent from downtown, he has a knack for carving up space within the 3-point line.

Now that head coach Kenny Atkinson is letting him run the offense in spurts, LeVert is exhibiting just how good of a shot creator he is. He’s making the guard conundrum even more difficult to figure out as D’Angelo Russell and Spencer Dinwiddie play out their contract years.

Speaking of Russell, his season has not been stellar. The former No. 2 overall pick is not drumming up much free agency value, as LeVert and Dinwiddie impose their will on the offense. DLo has scored in bunches, but not really as a pioneer of the offense. It’s mostly been spurts of hot shooting as a function of the play.

Considering how badly this team needed an alpha, Russell’s shortcomings have not been pleasant. But you know who has been pleasant instead? Dinwiddie. His heroics against the Detroit Pistons are now a yearly occurrence, and now he’s actually shooting well too. At 46.8 percent from the field and 42.6 percent from 3-point land, he’s really taken over as the bench unit’s captain.

The most defining trend of this lead guard circus is how they’re used in crunch time. On two separate occasions, both against Detroit, the two guards on the floor for Brooklyn were LeVert and Dinwiddie, not Russell. Atkinson justified these decisions by claiming he played the hot hand, which is probably the right way to manage it.

That concept also justifies more Joe Harris minutes. I wrote about his underrated value ad nauseam over the summer, and it’s coming to fruition this season. He’s hit 30 of his 50 3-pointers this season, good for a clean 60 percent. That number will come back to earth, but his quick release and pristine form will continue to open up space for the former three to do damage.

Overall, shooting has been a point of strength for these Nets. Unlike last season when they ranked near the bottom in 3-point efficiency, this roster is currently scorching the sixth-highest percentage of their 3s in the NBA at 38.2 percent. The 2-point percentage merely ranks 17th at 50.8 percent, but they have the seventh-best effective field goal percentage at 53.5 percent.

In simpler terms, the Nets shoot a lot and shoot well — for now. It helps that Atkinson seldom resorts to a two-big lineup, if at all. That offensive space gives room for multiple ball-handlers to attack and get guys open, which the Nets have plenty of.

They have versatile pieces up and down the roster who can do multiple things, which is a testament to general manager Sean Marks‘ work behind the scenes. Their complete demolition of the Philadelphia 76ers, a talented but flawed roster, was a perfect example of this strength.

Even if individual pieces start to falter, the overall makeup of the team acts as a buffer. They’re objectively better than last year, and well on their way.