Originally Posted by
Troublemaker
Whoa, you must be feeling mighty sensitive (Clemson loss?) if you thought anyone was being dismissive. I'm almost certain that in my post I agreed that Dinwiddie is a good player that the Nets would miss, but... he's still not the difference between a dominant team and a below-.500 team. The elephant in the room for why the Nets started so well but then started losing is that they stopped playing defense. (And if you're going to commence searching for articles about Dinwiddie being a huge defensive difference-maker, you'll be very disappointed, haha).
Well, Nash shook up the rotation in a major way today with Durant out, placing a lot more emphasis on giving players who could be decent defenders playing time. Two of the bigger moves were starting Jarrett Allen over DeAndre Jordan (Allen being the better defender/player at this point in their careers) and putting Bruce Brown, a pretty decent defender, in the starting lineup as well. Kyrie also put in the defensive effort that was missing since the early games. Result was a spanking of the favored Jazz.
If the Nets defend, they're going to score enough to win.