Ovie Soko says Kyrie Irving means business with Brooklyn Nets this season
Tuesday 29 October 2019 16:51, UK
Ovie Soko says Kyrie Irving's first three Brooklyn Nets performances show he means business this year and the All-Star has an impressive supporting cast around him.
Sky Sports' new NBA analyst also gives his thoughts on the Memphis Grizzlies' rookie guard Ja Morant and the Golden State Warriors' poor start.
Irving means business with the Nets
Kyrie has come out at the start of the season and he means business. I just think he is locked in. He was out to make a statement in Brooklyn's opening game and he did just that with 50 points. It was unfortunate he couldn't finish it off by getting the 'W'.
Kyrie has scored 113 points in his first three games for Brooklyn, that's a record for a player joining a new team (beating James Harden who posted 106 in his first three games for Houston).
But he's not out there alone, which I like. I feel they have the perfect 'role' guys on their roster. Spencer Dinwiddie found his groove last year playing alongside D'Angelo Russell. Now with Kyrie, he is used to playing next to someone who has the ball in their hands quite a bit.
Joe Harris is a solid three-point shooter. Caris LeVert brings extra scoring firepower. And the big men they have, DeAndre Jordan and Jarrett Allen, are selfless guys. They'll live off dump-offs, doing the dirty work and they don't mind setting screens for their team-mates all day.
Taurean Prince has shown he will be the 'blue-collar' guy, he's happy to defend and be a hard-nosed guy.
Even with Kevin Durant out for the year, Brooklyn have turned into a potentially scary team. I see them as a playoff team. Kyrie has made the loudest splash to start the season but we've seen over the last week that the pieces around him complement him very well.
He has team-mates able to make defensive plays and have inside presence plus players in LeVert and Dinwiddie - two legit guys - whose scoring can support him on any given night. When Kyrie comes out of the game, the Nets still have legitimate scoring threats on the floor.
Even though Brooklyn dropped two games in overtime to start the season, they will develop nicely and ultimately their recipe is going to translate into wins. It has been a decent start for a new team.
'Morant did not back down'
I've got to shout out Memphis Grizzlies rookie Ja Morant. I loved how he played down the stretch going head to head with Kyrie in Memphis' overtime win against Brooklyn on Sunday night.
I feel like he gave us a glimpse into the type of player he is and the type of player he wants to become in the NBA. If you said Kyrie was your pick for best point guard in the league, no one would like at you like you were crazy. But Ja didn't back down, which I loved to see. He outscored Kyrie in the fourth quarter. He took it to him.
He still has some work to do to make himself a consistent scoring threat from outside, guys will start forcing him to take that shot. But the way he attacks the basket… I love it, because he creates fouls and opportunities for his team-mates.
He is attacking and he's making some pretty good decisions at times. He is turning the ball over quite a bit at the moment but that number will come down over time.
Live NBA: Milwaukee @ Boston
Warriors, Russell going through a tough time
On the other hand, it's been a little bit sad watching the Golden State Warriors so far. This is not the Warriors we have got used to seeing over the last five or six years. They have nine new players on their roster and it is showing.
Watching their games so far, I have seen quite a lot of inconsistency. They go through periods where nothing seems to work or click. D'Angelo Russell is having a tough time trying to transition into the Golden State's style of play. He has put up the numbers but he has not been very efficient. He scored 24 as the Warriors got their first win of the season on Monday night, but it took him 21 shots to get there.
The Warriors' start to this season has allowed people another chance to appreciate what Klay Thompson has brought to this team over the years. In my opinion, he is one of the best players you could use to complement any superstar in the game. He does his job so efficiently and without the need to have the basketball in his hands very much - think back to that 52-point night he had last October against the Bulls, he set the NBA single-game three-pointer record in a game where he took just nine dribbles.
That effectiveness, that efficiency is so valuable for any superstar player. You can kick the ball to Klay is a variety of situations and he'll make a call to shoot or not very quickly. That ball never gets stuck.
The opposite is happening right now with D'Angelo Russell at times. In the Warriors' game against OKC, I could see frustration from Draymond Green when D'Angelo was taking maybe one dribble too many. One dribble might not seem a lot to people watching, but it is the difference between being able to get the ball in rhythm to shoot or not.
This is one area where the Warriors thrived over recent years. They didn't take unnecessary dribbles, they kicked the ball out to the perimeter without overdribbling and they always got the ball to where it needed to be on time. That's what made their offense run so smoothly and helped them get so many wide-open looks at the basket. Defenses had to pick their poison because the ball was always moving.
You are not seeing those open shots now their personnel has changed. It's now evident that, in previous seasons, guys were exactly where they needed to be. It also shows how specific the Warriors' offense was to their personnel. They can still get some of those shots, but the personnel is different so the shooting percentages are not as good.
Russell is going through a hard time. Mentally it must tough. He has come into Golden State and he wants to make a huge impact like he did with the Nets last year. They've signed him expecting big things. It's a dynamic where I would expect it to take a little bit of time for him to get comfortable and for the Golden State mainstays to get used to him too.
Read more from Ovie Soko throughout the season as part of Sky's best-ever NBA offering, which will include 134 live games and a record 48 games in weekend primetime slots.
