The Nets are an offensive team. We know this much to be true. They enter the time of this writing ranked 10th in offensive rating, compared to 22nd in defensive rating. Brooklyn is currently two games out of the playoffs despite being five games below .500. Can the Nets offense carry them to a playoff spot in a weak Eastern conference?

Drawing Fouls

We know the Nets want to be Rockets East. To their credit, offensively they do a decent imitation. Brooklyn is 7th in the league in free throw rate. Last night against the Hawks the Nets took 33 free throw attempts.

Dinwiddie is the Nets’ star in this area. Among guards that have played at least 500 minutes this season, and are posting at least a 20% usage rate, Dinwiddie is 5th in free throw rate. If we scrap the position requirement, Dinwiddie is 17th among all players in free throw rate.

The issue for Brooklyn is they aren’t hitting their free throws. The team is 22nd in free throw percentage, hitting 74.8% of their tries. Allen Crabbe is ~50 points below his career free throw mark, but he is only getting to the line 1.4 times per game.

Another one of their best players at getting to the line, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, simply isn’t making his free throws. With the injury to Caris LeVert, Hollis-Jefferson is taking the 3rd most free throws per game on the team. On 3.5 attempts per game RHJ is shooting 64.2% from the line, despite his career average being 75%. Hopefully this rebounds back up.

Sharing is Caring

Brooklyn isn’t racking up assists either. They stand at 19th in assist rate. The Nets have capable passers. The issue lies with the off-ball ability of the roster. Here is a table of the Nets five highest usage players this season that have played at least 400 minutes, sans Caris LeVert, and how they grade in off-ball movement and playmaking for their careers.

Player	Off-Ball Movement	Playmaking
D’Angelo Russell	B	A-
Spencer Dinwiddie	C	A
Shabazz Napier	C+	B
RHJ	C	B-
DeMarre Carroll	C+	C-

The one combo that makes tuning in each night a worthy endeavor is the Russell-Jarrett Allen pick n’ roll. These two have developed great chemistry. This does make sense. Russell is 10th in the league in assist percentage. For his career, Allen has a B+ grade in off-ball movement, to go along with a B+ in finishing and an A in roll gravity.

The interesting dynamic between these two is that Russell doesn’t throw many lobs to Allen. Instead, these two understand spacing and timing, patiently waiting to get a defender in a two-on-one situation, before Russell bounces a pass through a crevice that Allen finishes.

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Shooting

The good news is that hoisting all those three point shots has been worth it. Brooklyn has the 6th highest three-point attempt rate in the league, and are tied for the 10th best three-point percentage with Portland.

The less encouraging news is that despite the success from beyond the arc, the Nets are 18th in true shooting percentage, and 17th in eFG%.

The issues here are two fold. First, while the Nets are getting a fair amount of their looks at the rim, they aren’t hitting those shots. Brooklyn is taking the 13th highest percentage of their field goals within three feet of the basket. However, the Nets are 24th in FG% on shots that close to the rim.

And while the team does not take many long-twos, they are terrible at those shots. Brooklyn takes the 5th least amount of shots as a percentage of their field goals from 16 feet out to the three-point line. They are shooting 34% from that distance, which ranks 27th in the league.

Among regular rotation players, the biggest culprits here are Crabbe and Napier. Crabbe is taking the largest volume of long-twos as a percentage of his shot profile on the team, and shooting 9.4% on such shots. No, I didn’t accidentally misplace the decimal point. He is shooting nine and four tenths percent on long-twos.

Napier is shooting 22.2% on long-twos, and is taking the third most of such shots on the team as a percentage of his shot profile.

The reality is both players should enjoy some positive regression, but it would be wise for each to cut out some of those shots. Crabbe is a career 37.1% shooter from 16 feet out to the three-point line, and Napier is a career 43.2% shooter from that range.