Miami Heat Conference Roundup: How the Brooklyn Nets stack up

Miami Heat conference roundup: Brooklyn Nets

How the Miami Heat stack up

The Brooklyn Nets have an amazing roster, but the Miami Heat actually made some solid moves to counter it. They added great defensive pieces that will help deal with the offensive prowess of the Nets.

Starting off with PJ Tucker, he showed an ability to guard Kevin Durant pretty well in the playoffs last year. Some people say he was unsuccessful, but context is very important.

Durant is one of the best scorers in the history of basketball. Stopping him from getting buckets is impossible, so it’s all about making those buckets as difficult as possible.

Tucker held Durant to 45.5% shooting from the field and 30.8% shooting from deep when he was on Durant in the Bucks’ series vs the Nets. In the first two rounds of the playoffs, Durant shot 54.6% from the field and 50.0% from deep.

Based on those numbers, Tucker did a pretty great job guarding Durant. He’ll help out the Miami Heat in that regard next year, and should absolutely be assigned with guarding Durant this year.

As for the rest of the roster, that leaves Butler, Adebayo, and Lowry to guard Harden and Irving. That means one of them won’t have to worry about guarding a superstar.

Having one of those players, likely Adebayo, available to help on defense will be great. They match up super well with Miami on that end.

Past that, Miami’s bench might not be as talented as Brooklyn’s, but it’s not bad. As a whole, they match up with Brooklyn much better this year than they did last season.