The Nets Might Be the Greatest Shooting Team Ever

If not for the unsettling behavior that plagued Barclays Center earlier this season—not to mention the months of dysfunction, trade demands, and chaos that preceded it—these Brooklyn Nets would be revered. On paper, Brooklyn might have the greatest collection of shooters ever assembled. In reality, that’s exactly what it has been.

The Nets are the NBA’s hottest team. They’ve lost one game in the last four weeks and became a blowtorch in December, sporting an NBA-best 120.5 offensive rating. But even all of that doesn’t begin to describe how impressive their season has become. This team is historically great at the one thing every team wishes it could be historically great at; the best possible version of what the front office conceptualized during an offseason that otherwise sapped so much optimism from what was possible.

Brooklyn currently ranks first all time in effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage, second in 2-point field goal percentage, and is tied for 18th in 3-point percentage. We’re not even at the All-Star break, sure. But Brooklyn’s current effective field goal percentage is slightly ahead of where the 2018 Warriors—which once had the highest effective field goal percentage on record—were at the 40-game mark.

Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are peerless, unguardable marksmen who regularly drain fanciful shots that most NBA players can’t even conjure in a daydream. Durant—who left Sunday night’s game early with a knee injury and will get an MRI on Monday—is currently experiencing the most efficient season of his Hall of Fame career and averaging 30 points per game, while Irving has crossed the hallowed 50/40/90 barrier since returning from his eight-game suspension in late November.

But Brooklyn’s shooting success goes far beyond Irving and Durant. Seth Curry and Joe Harris are the third- and fourth-most accurate 3-point shooters in NBA history (minimum 1,000 attempts). Yuta Watanabe is a blazing 52.7 percent behind the arc. Royce O’Neale and T.J. Warren can’t be ignored 25 feet from the basket. Patty Mills isn’t even in the rotation but is a career 39 percent 3-point shooter.

In the paint, Brooklyn also has Nic Claxton, who leads the league in field-goal percentage and does a terrific job capitalizing off all the attention everyone else demands. Ben Simmons is predictably reluctant to shoot unless the seas part, but deserves plenty of credit for accelerating this team’s tempo and diming up those aforementioned weapons in transition.

All together, head coach Jacque Vaughn’s simplified offensive system has become a nirvana of gravity and space that induces complete and total panic for the opposition. There are several reasons to believe this group can win the title—their top-five defense since November 1 shouldn’t be overlooked—but Brooklyn’s ability to absolutely drown opponents with sensational, sustainable outside shooting is why nobody wants to…