Nets In Transition?

The Brooklyn Nets are one of the deepest teams in the National Basketball Association. Their starting lineup of Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Brook Lopez accounts for 35 all star game appearances. Additionally, their bench is complete with sharpshooter Jason Terry, defensive stopper Andrei Kirilenko and solid contributors of Andray Blatche, Shaun Livingston, Mirza Teletovic, Reggie Evans and others. On paper, the Nets look destined for a deep playoff run. Still, there will always be doubters with this roster. The most abundant criticism that has been said about the newly assembled roster is that they are too old. It's true that the average age of their starting line up is 31.6 years old, but the Dallas Mavericks team that won the NBA championship in 2010-2011 was also an incredibly aged squad and they are still to this day the only team that has beaten the "Big 3" in a playoff series. The more glaring concern for the Nets is not their age, but how given their older roster makeup, will they be able to play Jason Kidd's fast breaking style.

In Jason Kidd's last twelve years in the NBA his teams never finished worse than 15th in the league in percent of points coming from the fast break. In the prime of his career with the Nets, the New Jersey team never finished worse than 7th in percent of points coming from the fast break. Kidd's Nets teams in the early to mid 2000's were some of the most exciting teams in NBA history; the constant alley oops and baskets in 5 seconds or less were incredibly entertaining and effective. This Nets team though is not fit to run that style of play. Garnett and Pierce's minutes will already be limited and both have not been part of fast breaking teams since their times with the Timberwolves and the Celtics in the very early 2000's. Brook Lopez has shown that he works way better in a half court setting and Joe Johnson plays the opposite style of transition play, as he is commonly known as "Iso Joe". The only two players on the Nets who have shown great success in a transition style is star Deron Williams, who is constantly trying to push the pace,and newly acquired shooter Jason Terry. Terry prefers the ball in transition and that is why he enjoyed playing with Kidd so much in Dallas.

It remains to be seen how Kidd will coach his elderly roster. A motion offense may be the best course of action for this team because it will include some movement, but not so much that this team will literally break. Still, it is concerning when your best player and coach would prefer to run a fast-paced team and the rest of your roster is just not equipped for that style.

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