Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn said Joel Embiid’s size and strength might force him to go deeper into his rotation — which means there may be an unexpected face or two taking the court in Brooklyn’s upcoming first-round playoff series against the Philadelphia 76ers.
Welcome to the second installment of Nets Playoff Intel, and the task at hand for Vaughn and his coaching staff is to piece together the five-man lineups that give Brooklyn the best shot to win.
It’s a task easier said than done. Twelve Nets players are veterans with playoff experience — and then there’s a wild card: second-year guard Cam Thomas, who has four 40-point games in the second half of the season but has been on the tail end of Vaughn’s rotation.
“It’s going to be interesting. This is such a team where Embiid proposes such a challenge for us,” Vaughn said when asked if he’d keep his rotation limited to eight or nine players entering the playoffs. “The best thing about this group is you try to keep them locked in and ready for when their number is called. Usually, you do trim your rotation going into the playoffs. No secret about that, but we’ll be in a position where I think guys who haven’t played will have an impact in this series.”
If you want to get a sense of who’ll see heavy minutes in Game 1, look no further than the handful of games the Nets had to win to solidify their playoff standing in the last leg of the regular season.
The most important of those games were Brooklyn’s March 31 124-107 victory over the Atlanta Hawks, followed by the subsequent one-point victory over the Utah Jazz on April 2.
Vaughn’s rotations looked similar in both of those games: Four of the five starters — Nic Claxton, Cam Johnson, Mikal Bridges and Spencer Dinwiddie — logged 32 or more minutes, while minutes at the four were split between Dorian Finney-Smith and backup forward Royce O’Neale. In fact, O’Neale logged more minutes off the bench in the victory over the Hawks, while Finney-Smith played a larger share of the minutes three nights later against the Jazz.
Sharpshooter Joe Harris is also traditionally one of Vaughn’s earlier substitutions, as is reserve guard Seth Curry. Those are the eight mainstays in Vaughn’s rotation.
It’s no secret, however, that Embiid’s ability to use his size and strength to draw fouls could force Vaughn deeper into his rotation. That means we could see second-year big man Day’Ron Sharpe draw an Embiid assignment for a few possessions at a time. Sharpe has earned Vaughn’s trust and played critical backup center minutes over the final month-plus of the regular season.
Vaughn inadvertently hinted that Sharpe could be part of the rotation when asked about the wealth of playoff experience on his deep veteran team. It’s another reason why those battle-tested players have to be locked-in, even if they’re not penciled into the rotation on a given night.
“I discussed this with the group the other day, and I used the example: I said, ‘Patty Mills, you’ve won this whole thing. You’re going to have to help Day’Ron Sharpe out in a game, his preparation. If he’s going to play in this series, you’ve got to help him out’,” Vaughn said. “We’ve got guys that played in series finals. Help a teammate out; whether that is how they organize their ticket requests to little things like that, and how they mentally and physically get themselves ready — whether that’s social media or no social media. So being able to help each other out; definitely ask this group to do that with each other.”
The Nets are deep elsewhere on the roster. Vaughn has leaned on Yuta Watanabe at times throughout the regular season, and Watanabe appeared in four playoff games for the Toronto Raptors last season, albeit in small minutes. Mills has been on the outside of the rotation, but he won an NBA title with the San Antonio Spurs in the 2013-14 season and led Team Australia’s mens national basketball team to a bronze medal in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
“That experience goes a long way,” O’Neale said. “Patty, he’s the ultimate champion, and that’s what we all want to be.”
Dinwiddie and Finney-Smith went to the Western Conference Finals with Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks last season, and O’Neale was part of a Utah Jazz team that was a perennial playoff contender built around Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert.
Not to mention Bridges and Johnson went to the NBA Finals with the Phoenix Suns and lost, 4-2, to Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Milwaukee Bucks in 2021. Bridges said the biggest thing he learned from the Suns’ failed championship run was to speak his mind.
“Feel something, talk about it: You don’t want to be two months later sitting at home watching or saying like ‘We should have done this, should have done that,’” he said. “If you feel a certain way talk to the coaches, talk to the guys and go from there. I think just holding back — it’s not the time to hold back. If you a feel a certain type of way about something, it’s gut check time now.”
And then, of course, there are two wild cards: Vaughn has trusted Edmond Sumner in critical minutes this season — and Sumner has delivered — and Thomas’ individual scoring abilities can’t be overlooked.
Thomas scored 46 points in 43 minutes in Brooklyn’s season finale against Philadelphia in a game both teams rested their core players. The Nets lost that game, 134-105, an embodiment of why Vaughn has opted to go with Curry as his first guard off the bench more often than Thomas.
“I wish the score was 134 Brooklyn Nets, 105 Philadelphia. I think that part helps. The goal is you win as a team. So 46 points is great, but we end up losing by 30. So you’ve got to attach those together,” Vaughn said after the finale. “How do you marry the 29 shots to being a productive teammate where you might not get that amount of shots in a typical game? That’s the question. So can you harness and take that ability and be able to do it in the shorter amount of time? In a more efficient time? And in a setting that it benefits the entire team? That’s the challenge.”
The Nets don’t have much of a choice but to lean on their depth. The Sixers have the strong edge in the talent category. All indications point to Embiid winning his first Most Valuable Player award this season, and he’s merely the head of the snake: The Sixers have won games with the offense running through James Harden, Tyrese Maxey or Tobias Harris this season.
The Nets are hanging their hat, however, on the fact that they were able to secure a guaranteed playoff seed without a superstar-caliber player, while four other teams with A-list stars had fight to the finish in the East’s play-in tournament.
“Our biggest thing is just playing for each other, playing for one another,” said Bridges. “We have all the confidence in the world in everybody out there. Whatever five is out there and we got to play together and play hard and play for the whole 48.”
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