As expected, the Kyrie Irving-James Harden pairing is a work in progress.
Irving and Kevin Durant were an electrifying early-season duo, and when Irving was out due to personal reasons, the Durant-Harden pairing made the Nets look, at times, flat-out unguardable.
With Durant out due to Achilles rehab management against the Cavaliers on Friday, Irving and Harden made their debut as a duo.
Irving was the lone bright spot in an otherwise disappointing performance by the Nets in Cleveland. He scored 38 points on 14-of-24 shooting from the field, hitting shot after shot to keep Brooklyn afloat against a Cavaliers team that eventually ran off with a 125-113 win.
Harden, on the other hand, was too passive for a game without Durant. The Beard shot 6-of-14 from the field, and even though he logged 11 assists, the Nets needed more scoring punch from Harden.
Offense is the least of this team’s worries; shoring up the defense will mean far more. But the team does keep turning the ball over, and Irving and Harden don’t quite have a seamless on-court relationship yet.
“We want to complement James as best we can, and me as a guard out there with him, that’s primarily my focus, and I want him to be in a great rhythm for the rest of the game,” said Irving. “Our team needs it. So whatever we need to do moving forward, like I said this was two humbling losses. … Now what are we gonna do? Nothing more but to pick ourselves up out there as competitors, go home, talk about it, and now we play in less than 24 hours, so I’m looking forward to the challenge with my teammates and we’ll just keep going, we’ll just keep pushing. Nothing’s gonna be perfect. It’s a long ride.”
For Nets head coach Steve Nash, Harden’s arrival gives him another chance — or daunting task — of tinkering with rotations to figure out what’s best. Harden’s talents are best complemented by spacing the floor with shooters and one dunker at the center spot. But those complementary pieces haven’t been helping one of the league’s worst defenses.
“We’ve got to continue to work through this and continual discovery on our best rotations and combinations, but we’ve also got to be patient and try to survive, in some sense, this early season for us,” Nash said. “We got a lot to clean up, but we’ve got a lot to build on too. So, you know, while we’re frustrated, while we need a reaction, we also don’t need to overreact. We’ve got to keep this team together because that’s the one thing that can unsettle us as if we don’t stick together, if we allow some of these disappointments to magnify and to throw us off.
“We’ve got to really just continue to push together, take some lumps along the way that will make us better and show more resolve and give us some lessons that will be necessary come playoff time.”
Harden conceded he needs to be more aggressive as a scorer. He was very effective in finding his teammates for open shots, but those teammates couldn’t hit. Joe Harris shot 2-of-7 from three, Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot shot 3-of-7, Bruce Brown missed both of his attempts from the corner, Jeff Green shot 1-of-3 and Landry Shamet missed all five of his attempts from downtown.
Hence why it’s important for Harden and Irving to reach some level of on-court chemistry for this team to reach its potential. Stars can’t always rely on role players to make shots.
But it’s evident that role players can’t always rely on stars to be comfortable, or in their element, on any given day. These are three superstars who want to play with one another. Their chemistry is only a matter of time.
“It’s a process. Obviously, we all know how great Kyrie, how great of a scorer he is,” Harden said. “But like I said, for all of us — not just me, KD, and Kai — all of us have to find a way to lock in and be engaged, on the same page, with whatever five guys that are out there defensively. As much as we can talk about scoring, we are very good at scoring. You got to round up some stops. Once we get that going, then we will be, you know, elite on both ends of the ball. But right now our problem is defense.”
