Ben Simmons as point guard without Kyrie doesn’t work
The Nets’ second preseason game of the season was a disaster to say the least. Kyrie Irving and Joe Harris, who participated in the first game, took a rest, and Ben Simmons, who played as a forward in the previous game, was in charge of point guard, but the playmaking did not go well and the offense stagnated.
“There were games where you had to go one-on-one once morest the defense, but now we’re different,” Kyrie said following the first preseason game. The pass flew around,” he said, but the Nets showed a completely different appearance on this day.
Against the Heat, where Kyle Lowry assembles the game as a control tower, the Nets did not mesh with team play, and the destination was a reproduction of last season’s bad habit of entrusting the ball to Kevin Durant. Durant scored 22 points on 8 of 12 field goals, but the positives of the ace’s performance were overshadowed by the negatives of poor team play.
Simmons is strong on the ball, but lacks ideas beyond that point, and second-place point guard Patty Mills is too sluggish to improve the situation. There was little left to see for the Nets following Durant walked off the court following 26 minutes with five minutes left in the third quarter and a 20-point deficit.
Head coach Steve Nash also has a bitter expression from beginning to end. “Durant dependence” is a problem that must be improved as soon as possible, as it was one of the reasons Durant requested a trade this off.
Yuta Watanabe got 21 minutes of playing time, but most of it was without Durant, which meant that the Nets weren’t on the wave, and he himself struggled to find his rhythm. 4 minutes play in the 1st quarter. He played with the defense with his quick pass work, which he himself was the starting point, and at the end, he dived under the goal and called in a pass to invite a foul, but he missed both free throws and might not score.
By the time it came back into play in the second half, it was time for Durant to step down. Detecting Jovic’s cut-in, he entered the help under the goal and scored a block shot, and assisted Dalon Sharp’s shot, which moved in conjunction with his own drive. He hit four field goals and suffered from shooting touches with no success, but at the end of the day Sharp, who gave the first assist pass, returned the kick-out pass. He took advantage of a perfect catch-and-shoot opportunity to score a 3-pointer and managed to stay scoreless.
Watanabe scored 3 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist and 2 blocks in 21 minutes of play. While the team was in a slump from start to finish, it would have been a big appeal if the flow of the game might be changed here, but that was not the case.
