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Jacque Vaughn speaks of ‘different schemes’ to improve Brooklyn’s rebounding

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Brooklyn’s defense may look a little different this year in their pursuit of cleaning up the glass

In this pre-pre-season phase of the 2023-’24 NBA season, the Brooklyn Nets are saying all the right things about their most glaring deficiency last season: rebounding.

Brooklyn’s messaging on the topic extends back to last spring, when Sean Marks said “Without a doubt, we need to make some changes in terms of adding some size,” during his exit interview. “I think Jacque (Vaughn) said it last night, add a little nastiness.”

Those comments came following a first-round sweep at the hands of the Philadelphia 76ers, who won the second-chance points battle by a whopping 80-22 score. Yikes. Those comments, however, did not pre-date Marks adding a whole lot of traditional size in the offseason. Yes, Harry Giles III, Trendon Watford, and Darius Bazley are big men, nominally, Besides being fringe rotation players at best, they can be loosely categorized as finesse guys, rather than big bodies.

Still, rebounding is clearly a main focus for the group heading into the fall. Giles mentioned it as his main pathway to get on the court, while Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson each noted it as an area for individual improvement. Vaughn promised that Day’Ron Sharpe would see rotation minutes early in the season to “see how he can impose his will not only helping us, I don’t know, put things back to neutral by offensive rebounding, but at the same time, being big and a force for us at the rim,” and singled out the return of Ben Simmons as a boost in the area.

Does any of that mean anything? Eh. Every NBA team wants to rebound the ball, and every NBA player, often sincerely, promises to do his part on the glass during Media Day. But rebounding is about more than desire. How are the Nets actually planning to address their rebounding deficiencies?

Jacque Vaughn dropped some hints a week prior to Media Day, when asked directly about the issue: “I think the one piece is, are there schemes that we can lean towards a little bit that last year, we were just a little bit handcuffed, this is how we had to play? With a training camp, I’m going to put more things on the guys’ plate early in the year for us to try out.”

On Tuesday afternoon, the first official Nets practice of the year, Vaughn got even more specific, per Erik Slater of ClutchPoints:

“Last year was last year. We switched everything because that was the most simple thing to do with three different teams on one roster. And so I tried to keep it real simple for our group. We’ll challenge this group to be able to play different schemes and part of that will be keeping Nic [Claxton] close to the rim at times.”

This is not exactly revelatory information. There are only so many schemes to run in the NBA, with just about every team deploying drop coverage at least occasionally. Even Brooklyn followed suit at times last season; thus, we have evidence of Nic Claxton as a great-if-not-elite drop defender:

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The above is a clip from this video below, where Ben Pfeifer of NBA Draft Analysis and I talk extensively about Claxton’s game as a whole:

This was a predictable course of action for Vaughn and company after their off-season signings, namely Dennis Smith Jr. and, to a lesser extent, Lonnie Walker IV. Part of sustaining a healthy drop defense is by about playing guards who can get over ball-screens swiftly, maintaining pressure on the ball-handler.

Mix one or both of that duo in with a hopefully healthy Simmons and Mikal Bridges, on top of Claxton waiting in the paint, and suddenly Vaughn may have the makings of an effective defense that’s geared toward defensive rebounding.

In fairness, there are questions about Claxton as a rebounding anchor. In the above video, Ben and I focus on his defensive improvements shining through in his drop coverage. Yet, his rebounding wasn’t the most impressive aspect of his drop coverage. Playing between the ball-handler and screener to break up lob attempts? Clax absolutely did that. Blocking the shots that did go up? Of course!

But Claxton isn’t the traditional, lumbering drop big that say, Brook Lopez is. By virtue of his size, Lopez is like a great defensive tackle that may not make the sack, but will swallow up two offensive linemen to help out his teammates. Claxton is long and skinny — no new information there. So, he doesn’t eat up space in quite the same way. Not to mention, parking Clax in the paint does take away some of his special switching talents.

Look, there’s no easy fix for a roster that’s still pretty thin. And it’s not like Brooklyn will forfeit a baked-in advantage of having a rotation full of wing-sized defenders and abandon switching entirely. But rest assured, Vaughn and his team have made it clear that rebounding will not take a backseat this season, and that they’ll try whatever it takes to shore up the glass.

The effort piece of this shouldn’t be overlooked either. Here’s video of every offensive board Philly grabbed against Brooklyn in Game 1 of last year’s playoffs:

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If the 2023-’24 Nets are going to be the tough, hungry team they talked themselves up as at Media Day, the rebounding will benefit. Sometimes it really is as simple as, “Don’t let your guy get the ball.”

JV isn’t just relying on improved effort from his team, though. If Brooklyn is going to make the leap to, at minimum, an average rebounding team, it’s going to be a result of both individual effort and schematic focus. Through just one mighty day of training camp, neither is being taken lightly.

Camp Notes

Cam Thomas said he’s hopeful that he will get more opportunities, but noted that no matter what, he’ll be ready for whatever Jacque Vaughn plans for him.

“I would hope so. But you never know. You just need to stay ready at all times, whatever the role is,” said Thomas. “If it’s still the same role or if it goes up more, I’ll be ready for it, no matter what. So, I’m just gonna stay ready at all times, no matter what the role is.”

Thomas, who produced three straight 40-point games after Kyrie Irving asked for a trade than hit 40 again in the season finale, had caused a bit of a stir during Media Day when he said Vaughn hadn’t told him much about where he can fit this season.

“The only thing they told me was just get my body right,” Thomas said then. “Obviously, that’s something I wanted to do anyway. … Get stronger. I put on muscle this summer, so I feel good. I feel real good. As far as being on the court and stuff, I haven’t been told nothing.”

Vaughn said that conversation is coming and not just with Thomas

“It will all be performance-based at the end of the day, but they all will have conversations with me,” Vaughn said Tuesday. “But no we didn’t give – we gave guys probably a few things to work on in the offseason. I think that was across the board with our group. Part of it was being in elite shape and being able to play with pace and do it over and over again, but everyone’s in that same bucket. They’ll have a personal conversation with me about performance.”