The Nets Are Ready to Move Forward
There’s a reason Brooklyn is taking the glass-half-full approach in the wake of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. He’s a 6-foot-11 positionless defender who leads the league in blocks and field goal percentage. “I think that I’m the only person in the league that can do that,” Nic Claxton says.The Nets Are Ready to Move Forward
There’s a reason Brooklyn is taking the glass-half-full approach in the wake of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. He’s a 6-foot-11 positionless defender who leads the league in blocks and field goal percentage. “I think that I’m the only person in the league that can do that,” Nic Claxton says.
Not even 24 hours after February’s chaotic trade deadline passed, Nic Claxton walks into a conference room inside the Nets practice facility. There’s hardly been any time for him to process a virtually unprecedented midseason implosion, but the sinewy figure who stands before me is, somehow, totally calm. Wearing slides, a light blue retro Nets hoodie, matching sweatpants, and a soft smile, Claxton radiates a disposition that is at once surprising and genuine.
Just a couple of months prior, Brooklyn looked stable and dominant, rattling off 18 wins in a 20-game span. But today, after the team was forced to confront its very own call-coming-from-inside-the-house nightmare, Kyrie Irving is on the Mavericks, Kevin Durant plays for the Suns, and the dream of winning a title soon is gone.
But in the wake of a situation that personifies disappointment, here sits a 6-foot-11 symbol of glass-half-full optimism the Nets can still cling to as they traverse one of the most funereal stretches in any franchise’s history.
“I’m glad to be”—he searches for the right words as he pulls out a chair and flashes a grin—“you know, shit, still here!”
Pivoting away from NBA royalty was painful and sudden for this team. But the reality is easier to digest with an ascending, astute, homegrown 23-year-old on the roster: someone who’s an elite and ideal defender in any scheme and just so happens to lead the league in field goal percentage and blocked shots.
“It’s always nice as an organization to go, ‘Hey, we’ve kept a young man, we’ve developed a young man, we found a young man, whatever it is, and now we’ve seen the progress through,’” Nets general manager Sean Marks tells The Ringer. “He’s got a lot of intangibles that, you know, to be quite frank, they’re hard to find. Right? Athleticism, versatility. And we saw glimpses of it over his first couple of years here.”
With the Nets at 34-26, still able to crash the playoffs despite revised expectations, Claxton embraces the fresh start, knowing more challenges—along with rewards he can earn while working to topple them—are ahead.
“I think that we’ll be one of the best defensive teams in the league once we jell,” Claxton says. “I don’t want to say my job will be ‘easier,’ but we have a lot of wing defenders. I may not have to cover for as many people anymore as I had to do in the past, which will be nice.”
To have Claxton blossom in and around incessant turmoil is a silver lining. If the Nets are a house, Durant was the foundation, and Irving was its electrical wiring. But Claxton was, and still is, the roof: a source of protection and comfort, shielding everyone else from elements untold. His impact travels from night to night, on the road and inside Barclays Center. His energy and effort is aided by disruptive length and deft blunt force.
He’s selfless, self-aware, contemplative, and eager, the 31st pick from the 2019 draft who, in Brooklyn’s first home game after the trade deadline, heard his name announced last during pregame introductions.
With Claxton almost halfway through a two-year, $17.3 million deal that allows him to enter unrestricted free agency in 2024, the Nets surely wish he was under contract for much longer. But, understandably, they weren’t leaping out of their chairs to lock themselves into a lasting pact with someone who entered this season with 20 career starts and about 1,800 minutes under his belt. Not to mention someone who has endured shoulder surgery and knee tendinopathy since being drafted, in addition to an illness that sidelined him for 17 straight games last year.
Heading into the offseason, Marks and his front office knew they needed Claxton to handle an expanded role and hoped he would prove reliable enough to thrive in it. “It wasn’t written in stone that I would be the starter, that I’d be the guy,” Claxton tells me. “But I earned it. I earned everything.”
The Ringer’s NBA Rankings
Our Top 100 players, the most exciting guys to tune into on League Pass, and more
During last season’s exit meeting, Marks told Claxton to focus on winning the NBA’s Most Improved Player award. He responded by building his slender frame up to prepare for more playing time and physically taxing responsibilities. Claxton has already logged more minutes than in the previous two seasons combined, with across-the-board career-best per-game averages (12.7 points, nine rebounds, and 2.5 blocks); displayed elite all-around defense; and recorded one of the most efficient seasons in NBA history.
“The dividends are paying off now,” Marks says. “I think it’s the NBA business, right? But, hell, you hope your team is full of those guys. We’ve had it before where we’ve had to move off some of those guys in the past.”
After all they’ve endured, Marks and the Nets are in a place that’s similar to where they were five years ago. This reboot features young talent and a bounty of draft picks at their disposal. It’s a future that can go in several directions, but no matter which they choose, Claxton will be integral. Thanks to some timely maturation, Claxton works to brighten an overcast outlook: a vital role he doesn’t plan on letting go of anytime soon.
Everyone who’s competed in an NBA game would benefit in subtle and obvious ways from playing on the same team as KD and Kyrie, Claxton included. But his value stands out in any environment, be it acting as an agitator on the offensive glass, making plays out of a short roll, or setting sturdy on- and off-ball screens to loosen up what might otherwise be a stagnant half-court offense.
His breakout season has both been amplified and overshadowed by that unparalleled level of shotmaking that humiliates any strategy designed to taper it.
Claxton is anything but helpless without Durant and Irving, though. He has oscillated between life as an auxiliary piece and an indispensable cog who makes key winning plays on both sides of the ball. Every team could use a bouncy, coordinated, rim-running big who’s skilled and agile.
He has plenty of lob dunks, and his average shot is 3.4 feet from the rim, but Claxton’s league-leading field goal percentage (71.7) isn’t quite in the same league as those posted by Rudy Gobert or DeAndre Jordan. There is a chisel and a sledgehammer in this toolbox.
Despite having no outside shot, Claxton isn’t paralyzed when someone shuffles him a pass outside the paint. He finishes through contact and tears into open space with the ball in his hands. He has enough touch and intuition to make something out of nothing in a difficult spot. Ignoring him isn’t an option.
Claxton’s quantified shooter impact on contested shots is a whopping 8.82, meaning his effective field goal percentage is much higher compared to what an average shooter would convert on those same attempts. That number is also over double what it was last year, and it illustrates a player who can do things when he’s not spoon-fed—key for his future without two superstars occupying all of the defensive attention.
“You can pass it to me in a dunker or out in space, and I’m gonna take up that space and finish in the way that I’ve been absorbing contact and finishing around the rim,” he says. “I’m just proud that I can do that now, because in my earlier years in the league, I would go at somebody, and I’m bouncing off of them.”
After Durant suffered a knee injury in early January, Claxton responded with not only the best basketball of his career, but a combination of production and efficiency that hasn’t been seen in over 55 years. “It did do something for me, especially psychologically,” he says. Claxton credits his minutes increase as a significant reason for his noticeable growth. He now plays through mistakes and has developed a feel that previously wasn’t there. With that comes an opportunity to showcase untapped, unique areas of his skill set.
“We’re talking about playing fast,” Nets coach Jacque Vaughn says. “The best way to play fast is if he gets the rebound and is able to bust out. That’s the ultimate goal. That’s like the Holy Grail for me, that he would start it. Then imagine Spencer [Dinwiddie] and Mikal [Bridges] and [Cameron Johnson] running the wing, and he just finds them. Off we go.” Marks agrees: “I’d love to see more of that. Don’t just revert to ‘Where’s the point guard?’”
A related sign of the fourth-year center’s personal expansion can be seen when he initiates a dribble handoff. Claxton rarely kept the ball in this type of action until a couple of months ago—“I’ve probably been doing that the last, what, 15 to 20 games or so?”—but he suddenly finds himself faking more handoffs than all but three players (Domantas Sabonis, Mason Plumlee, and Bam Adebayo) in the league. This news initially surprises him, but he’s quickly able to catalog why he’s become such a threat.
“I know my shooters. Good teams, they overreact to a Seth [Curry] or Joe [Harris] or Royce [O’Neale] coming off the screen,” Claxton says. “And my feet are a lot faster than a lot of the bigs. I’m able to just use my handle and get to the rim and finish.”
I then queue up a few examples on my laptop and ask Claxton to tell me what he sees as they unfold. The first is against the Clippers, an artful anticipation of what the defense wants to do:
“This is a great play call by J.V.,” Claxton says of Vaughn. “The Clippers, they switch everything on and off the ball.” I pause the clip right when he catches the ball at the left elbow. “Cam [Thomas] is cooking. He probably had 40 at this point. Cam came at me, and I faked it to him with one dribble. Now, I’m so explosive, I’m already at the rim. … Me getting to my left hand, that’s a tough cover for anybody.”
The next is against the Wizards, facing a defense that, in Claxton’s eyes, isn’t prepared for what he’s about to do:
Before the play even begins, Claxton already knows what will happen. He points at Kristaps Porzingis. “Defenders, they just get lazy, especially when I have the ball. They just think they can relax. … He’s sitting back in the drop, and he’s expecting [Monte Morris] to chase [Joe Harris]. As soon as I see they’re kind of just standing up straight, he’s not ready. He’s not in his stance. So I just know if I attack, I can get a bucket.”
That recognition symbolizes how quickly Claxton is evolving, particularly as it relates to how he’s honed himself as a complementary scorer. Claxton’s field goal percentage at the rim right now is almost exactly what it was last season. What’s changed is his success rate on shots that aren’t bunnies. Last season, Claxton converted only 28 percent of his field goal attempts between about 4 and 14 feet, according to Cleaning the Glass. At an identical volume, he’s currently scraping at 50 percent from that area.
“I think it’s just patience, not being sped up out there. I’m a quick learner, so even during the game, I’m able to just process stuff real fast, [like] how somebody’s guarding me,” he explains. “It’s kind of like boxing. A lot of the fighters that I really enjoy watching, they kind of collect intel all throughout the first few rounds of the fight. I find myself doing the same thing in basketball games, where I may not be as aggressive earlier on, but once the third and fourth quarter comes and I see the way that they’re switching or the way that this defender is just kind of sitting back and really not respecting me at all, I may wait and just turn it on.”
When asked about the area he most needs to rectify, Claxton spits out an answer before the question is even finished. “Free throw shooting,” he says. “I’ve had to overcome a lot mentally from the free throw line, and I’m proud of the steps that I’ve made this year. I still got a long way to go.”
Claxton is shooting just 51.1 percent at the free throw line this season. He went 4-for-22 in last year’s first-round loss to the Celtics, including a 1-for-11 flop in the series finale—a game he brings up on his own—and has been intentionally fouled on several occasions, an experience that bothered him more last year than now.
“If teams want to do that, honestly, it helps me. It makes me want to … prove them wrong, prove myself right,” Claxton says. “At the end of the day, who cares? … You know what I mean? Like, it’s a free throw! It’s just a free throw. Look at it like that. Go up there, trust my process, and make or miss and continue to do that every single time.”
The Ringer’s Updated NBA All In-dex
After the trade deadline, which teams are all in for a 2022-23 title push? And which ones have their sights set on the future?
Some NBA players taper their aggression when they know it can drag them toward a vulnerable predicament. Claxton isn’t one of them—drawing a direct juxtaposition with his teammate Ben Simmons—and that resilience isn’t lost around the league.
“I think he’s really improved offensively,” says Sixers head coach Doc Rivers. “The next step is making free throws, and he’ll get there, because you can tell he doesn’t care. He’ll still attack, doesn’t mind getting fouled, going to the line.”
For all the progress he’s shown with the ball, Claxton’s surge on the defensive end has been one of this season’s most meaningful developments.
He’s fifth in defensive estimated plus-minus and sixth in defensive real plus-minus. There’s some noise in these numbers, but his impact on Brooklyn’s half-court defense has been more positive than almost every player who’s logged at least 1,000 minutes.
Claxton is a rangy obstacle in the paint and on the perimeter. Outside of Bam Adebayo in 2021-22, no player in Second Spectrum’s entire database has ever averaged more switches per game. Claxton is also on pace to guard more isolations than everyone in Second Spectrum’s database except Clint Capela in 2019. Watch enough of these plays, and Claxton turns into a bedsheet neatly tucked over a mattress.
“Defensively, he’s had as much of an impact on their team as anybody in the league. And he does it in a different way, but it’s similar to what Bam does for us,” Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra says. “Everybody just likes to say, ‘Well, switch 1 through 5; it’s easier to defend all these pick-and-rolls.’ But if you don’t have the right personnel, particularly that center, if you don’t have a guy that can really move his feet, see situations, that can be a disastrous coverage.”
Claxton is plenty comfortable in open space, skittering around the court and prohibiting smaller players from turning the corner. “I was a guard growing up,” he explains. “I think that’s what makes it so easy for me, because, like, my older brother, he always jokes with me and says I pick the smallest player on the court to guard.”
When asked which other defenders are like him, Claxton smirks, pauses for 10 seconds, and then responds: “None.” A big who can lock guards in a phone booth, protect the rim, and stay out of foul trouble?
“I think that I’m the only person in the league that can do that,” he says.
Claxton is quick and long enough to also be the primary defender on opposing stars who don’t play the same position. Vaughn has thrown him on Kawhi Leonard and Jimmy Butler for extended stretches.
“Honestly, when you guard them, it’s like a fear. When you guard a star player, there’s like an appropriate fear,” Claxton says. “Like, if I come out here and I get cooked, everybody’s going to talk about it.”
He isn’t perfect, but he also very rarely finds himself getting dusted off the bounce or overpowered around the basket. “It’s the NBA,” he says. “People are gonna score on you. But a lot of it is me getting stronger, me getting smarter, and just getting reps. Because at the end of the day, players love to do similar things, and you start to pick up on tendencies.”
According to Second Spectrum, among all players who have been the closest defender on at least 500 shots, no defender holds opponents to a lower effective field goal percentage than Claxton, at 46.1 percent.
In the same way he reads the floor on offense, Claxton is wired to course-correct when it’s time to get stops. His memories of specific possessions literally stretch back years. This play against Dennis Schröder and the Lakers triggered a couple of them:
Claxton starts to narrate the action as it plays on my laptop. “I already know this play. And I can tell you, like, last year, we played against the Lakers—was it last year? I think it was last year [writer’s note: it was two seasons ago]. He scored on me like two or three times. So I knew what he was gonna do.”
“He’s got one of the quickest first steps in the league. I gotta give him more space.” When Schröder gathers for the layup, Claxton starts to shake his head. “Last year, I’m not blocking that. I don’t know if it’s timing, I don’t know if it’s me being more explosive, or me just knowing this is what he’s gonna do. This is what he’s trying to get to. And like I said, he beat me with the same play like three times last year, in Barclays, and I was really upset about it, and I said, ‘This time, it’s not gonna happen.’”
After Claxton’s NBA debut in 2019, Nets teammate Spencer Dinwiddie made a statement that turned more than a few heads. “I still believe [Jarrett Allen] is going to be an All-Star, but Nic is the second-most talented player on this team,” Dinwiddie said. “[First] is KD, either the first- or second-most talented scorer of all time. But Nic’s got game. He’s got a chance [to be great].”
Irving was also on that roster, along with Caris LeVert. But four years later, Dinwiddie—who is back with the Nets after stints with the Wizards and Mavericks—looks like an oracle.
“I think the reason I said it was because I believed it,” Dinwiddie said after a recent win against the Heat. “And also, I know that through my own personal journey, being a second-round guy or maybe not cracking a rotation immediately and all that other stuff, it would have meant a lot to hear something like that from my teammates. But it wasn’t blowing smoke. I really meant it.”
What he saw was a 19-year-old giant who could move his feet better than anyone else his size. His fluidity stood out on both ends. When asked about the most talented player on this Nets roster, Dinwiddie goes back and forth between Claxton and Bridges before settling on Nic when he’s told how old both players are. “In terms of just overall talent, the ability to have 10 more years being super impactful,” he says. “Like, 23 is young.”
Dinwiddie thinks Claxton is good enough to be a future All-Star but isn’t sure he’ll ever actually make the team. To get there, the stars will have to align. “All-Star is a popularity contest. … He’s also a big man, which means, like, he’s gonna have to do something sexy. You know what I mean? It’s tough. You feel me? Like, Cam Thomas may be more likely to make the All-Star team because if he scores 40 three times in a row, the national media is gonna talk about him. Nobody gives a shit if Claxton gets 20 and 10. … I’m really, like, breaking it down from a pragmatic perspective. I think he’s an All-Star talent already.”
But if he stays healthy and the Nets win, Claxton’s path to making the roster may be pretty clear. It’s one of his goals, along with winning Defensive Player of the Year. “I know I can be one of the best centers in the league,” Claxton says.
The Nets would obviously be thrilled if that happens. But even more important is how Claxton, striking a perfect line between rugged and refined, has flourished amid a turbulent campaign, positioning himself as a real candidate for two major awards in his first crack as a full-time starter.
Now the second-longest-tenured player on a team that’s desperate for normalcy, Claxton is also the antithesis of Brooklyn’s four-year superteam odyssey. The Nets should feel comfortable with him standing in as the overture for whatever comes next. They won’t win the title in 2023, but they have as much momentum as ever. And Claxton is as much to thank for that as anyone.
“I really love the group that we have right now,” he says. “I’m happy to move forward.”
