110-103 season-opening loss<\/a> at Barclays Center, leaving three members of last season\u2019s five-player first-round class waiting for their first minutes of Year 2. By Friday, head coach Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez was explaining how those initial decisions were made and how much room he wanted to give his chosen group to improve.<\/p>\n\u201cObviously nobody has guaranteed minutes,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez said after practice.<\/p>\n
The competition extends across the roster. Terance Mann and Josh Minott also received DNPs.<\/p>\n
For Fern\u00e1ndez, those choices draw on considerably more than one game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all the work they put through the summer and then through training camp and then the preseason games,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Last season, Brooklyn led the NBA in rookie minutes and finished 20-62. The five first-rounders return with a season of experience and more competition. Julius Randle\u2019s arrival gives Fern\u00e1ndez another established scorer alongside Porter. Rookie Mikel Brown Jr. adds another guard who can create with the ball.<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez wants the players who earned the first opportunities to have some continuity. He saw good intentions in the opener, along with plenty that needed correcting.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as the attitude is good and the intentions are good, I got to be a little bit patient with what I want to see,\u201d he said. \u201cBut then at the same time, if I feel I have to make changes because of the benefit of the group, I will.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first assignments came from months of work. Fern\u00e1ndez described changing things immediately after Game 1 as a sign of \u201cfreaking out.\u201d He wants to see the players already in the rotation build on what earned them those roles in the first place.<\/p>\n
The staff\u2019s evaluations include proper box-outs, running to the corners and touching the paint. Fern\u00e1ndez pointed to those actions Friday as measures of how hard the Nets played. Brooklyn had fallen short of its own expectations in those areas against Charlotte.<\/p>\n
Amid what Fern\u00e1ndez described as opening-night anxiety across the group, Ellis earned praise for \u201ca lot of composure.\u201d The guard scored seven points for the night, but in the fourth quarter alone, he had three assists, two steals and no turnovers.<\/p>\n
Nolan Traor\u00e9\u2019s next opportunity will come with his own adjustments to make. He played 15:31 in the opener and acknowledged Friday that he needed to use his speed more effectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I have to bring more pace to the game,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s my strength, so I got to use it more.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Brown, the opportunities also depend on how much basketball his body is ready to handle. He played 19:48 in his debut and will remain on a minutes restriction Saturday in Cleveland. The Nets\u2019 medical and performance staff has a plan to build his workload, and Fern\u00e1ndez indicated that more minutes and back-to-backs were not imminent.<\/p>\n
Porter described practices in which Brown had \u201cwon the day because he was killing.\u201d Expanding his workload will also depend on how his body handles the accumulated minutes, Fern\u00e1ndez said. The restriction affects which pairings the coach can explore. He wants to see Brown alongside Egor D\u00ebmin, but fitting those minutes into the game also means preserving the rhythm of the other players.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I want is to find the right groups that can function together and be efficient, that work on both ends of the floor,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez said. \u201cThat\u2019s on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Fern\u00e1ndez sorts through those combinations, Porter wants the players outside the rotation contributing to the group\u2019s energy. When asked about the young teammates who did not play, he pointed to what they had shown during training camp and expressed confidence that their opportunities would come.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, right now it\u2019s about being good teammates and bringing that energy, bringing that culture and enthusiasm to whatever your role is, whether you\u2019re on the court or not,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s instruction to Powell, Saraf and Wolf was to be ready when called and do whatever would help the team win.<\/p>\n
Traor\u00e9 knows how quickly an assignment can change. After playing in each of Wednesday\u2019s first three quarters, he watched the entire fourth from the bench. When asked Friday how he would handle minutes that might fluctuate, he said he was mentally prepared.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, that\u2019s just the job,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keon Ellis stole the ball from Moussa Diabat\u00e9. Five seconds later, Michael Porter Jr. finished an alley-oop layup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,4570,4475,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-381306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-jordi-fernandez","tag-nets","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381306","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=381306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}