{"id":36172,"date":"2025-11-11T16:48:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/36172\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T16:48:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:48:18","slug":"brooklyn-nets-vs-toronto-raptors-preview-tuesday-night-hoops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/36172\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn Nets vs. Toronto Raptors preview: Tuesday night hoops"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you can\u2019t defend, you can\u2019t win. The Brooklyn Nets learned that lesson once again as they allowed the New York Knicks to put on a three point extravaganza at Madison Square Garden on the way to a comfortable 33 point victory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The opponent tonight is a bit better than expected. The Toronto Raptors are 5-5 after ten games after losing<\/a> 130-120 on the road to the Philadelphia 76ers on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

YES Network on TV. WFAN on radio. Gotham Sports on streaming. Tip after 7:30 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n

No Cam Thomas or Haywood Highsmith. Day\u2019ron Sharpe is questionable with left hamstring tightness. Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf return from Long Island. Saraf averaged 18.0 points and 3.0 assists while Wolf averaged 19.0 points and 12.0 rebounds. Nolan Traore remains in the G League.<\/p>\n

Sandro Mamukelashvili is questionable.<\/p>\n

Teams are too good for you to play defense this bad. Brooklyn is allowing a mind-blowing 126.6 points per 100 possessions! That shouldn\u2019t be humanly possible, but here we are. It doesn\u2019t\u2019 hep that they\u2019re the worst rebounding team in the NBA as well. When you can\u2019t get stops AND you allow extra scoring opportunities, you\u2019re begging for a beatdown.<\/p>\n

Speaking of bad defense, the Raptors are fifth in the NBA in 3-point percentage at 39.1%. Brooklyn is WORST in the league at defending the three, allowing opponents to shoot 41% from downtown. I\u2019m certain Jordi Fernandez is stressing to the group the importance of being in sync on defense and not having those low effort plays and breakdowns on that side of the ball. The Nets have a lot to clean up, and no time better than the present to fix it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll get to see big name two rookies in action tonight. Egor D\u00ebmin has started to look more comfortable out there, and that will prove to be helpful the further in the season we go. A lot is riding on the success of the Flatbush Five <\/a>this season, and more good reps by D\u00ebmin will help him and team management immensely. On the Raptors side, Collin Murray-Boyles is finding his way and looking to stand out amongst the crowd. Over at Raptors Rapture<\/a>, Amos Caesar Mina makes an especially promising comparison if you\u2019re a Raptors fans<\/p>\n

Murray-Boyles\u2019 shaky jump shot was a point of concern, but his quality defense and versatility should\u2019ve stuck out as something to tantalize the Raptors. In essence, the Raptors added their own Draymond Green-lite in the making: someone who can defend positions one through five, grab boards, score at his own pace, and even find his teammates on the right plays. That was at least the expectation for his slow progression with the Raptors. However, as I mentioned earlier, the teeter-totter start to the year has already seen CMB emerge as a fundamental piece in the rotation.<\/p>\n

Nets fans are also likely to get another look at Drake Powell who had a big game vs. the Knicks, scoring 15 points on 3-of-3 shooting from deep and playing solid defense. In talking about the UNC product taken at No. 22, the head coach had this to say.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a very good basketball player on both ends of the floor,\u201d he said of the 20-year-old. \u201cHe can play with the ball in his hands, he\u2019s able to shoot, and he\u2019s very athletic. So all those were things we evaluated\u2026 I believe he can be very special.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the scoring for R.J. Barrett, it\u2019s the efficiency. Barrett has only shot under 47% from the field once this season and has helped the cause by finishing in the painted area at a tremendous clip. Barrett is shooting a career high 75% on shots inside of three feet according to Basketball Reference<\/a>. When one of your lead engines on offense can cash in like that at the cup, it opens the rest of the board up for him and his teammates. We keep saying it, but if Brooklyn wants to win, their defense needs to be serious for 48 minutes. If they don\u2019t, the fans will see the home team take another loud L.<\/p>\n

Player to watch: Scottie Barnes<\/p>\n

It sure doesn\u2019t feel like it, but this is Year Five for the former lottery pick. He\u2019s got the ball in his hands a ton and has paid off that faith by getting his turnovers down to a career low. The best offenses make the most out of every possession and Barnes possesses an ability to make the right play and hunt for his own shot. It\u2019s still early so we should keep an eye on that career high 45.5%t from 3-point range. It takes a good while for teams to adjust their priors on players, so we\u2019ll see if the Nets dare Barnes to beat them from deep. Should we assume Barnes\u2019 percentages are just an early bit of noise that isn\u2019t real? Or is this the sign of a new frontier for Barnes that will take him into another tier of players? Tonight will be a good test of that.<\/p>\n

Michael Porter Jr has had to take on more of the scoring load without Thomas, and he\u2019s doing the best he can under the circumstances. His season low in field goal attempts was 13, and that was in a game the Nets got blown out <\/a>in by the Houston Rockets. Porter Jr. has the green light whenever something good presents itself, and with the lack of players that can break you down off the dribble, look for the Raptors to throw a bunch of stuff at Porter to junk things up and confuse him.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Biggie bobblehead night, so let\u2019s take em back<\/p>\n

Ones in the air for Lenny Wilkens<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you can\u2019t defend, you can\u2019t win. The Brooklyn Nets learned that lesson once again as they allowed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,1766,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-36172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-nets-game-previews","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}