Tuesday night’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers actually started off on the right foot for the Brooklyn Nets. They took a 30-23 lead after the first 12 minutes of the contest, propelled by an active defense, featuring frequent trapping of ball-screens, a tactic they’ve hardly deployed this season, trapping ball-screens:
BKN has been trapping CLE's ball-screens early. Here, Claxton gets a deflection, leading to a fast-break oop for him: pic.twitter.com/VlydxIYB09
— Lucas Kaplan (@LucasKaplan_) March 21, 2023
They ran, they dunked, they scored 16 of their first 21 points in the paint, and it felt like they were going to be able to hang with the conference’s four-seed, to prove that Cleveland shouldn’t, in fact, want to face them in the playoffs.