The Nets made a change to their starting lineup on Friday night against Washington, with Dorian Finney-Smith replacing Cam Thomas, tweets Brian Lewis of The New York Post. Head coach Jacques Vaughn suggested earlier this week that Finney-Smith was likely to return to the starting five.
Thomas is Brooklyn’s leading scorer, averaging 22.8 points per game. However, he also takes 18.8 shots per game, and doesn’t provide much in terms of rebounding (2.8 RPG) or play-making for others (2.3 APG). He has improved defensively in his third season, but it’s still not a strong point.
As Lewis wrote earlier this week, it was seemingly inevitable that Vaughn would make the change, because the Nets have struggled mightily with Thomas starting and have thrived with Finney-Smith playing alongside the other four starters — Spencer Dinwiddie, Mikal Bridges, Cameron Johnson and Nic Claxton.
Finney-Smith can’t create his own shot like Thomas, but he’s bigger, a far superior defender, plays within the flow of the offense, and has been scorching hot from deep in 2023/24, averaging 44.8% from three on 5.5 attempts per night.
Here’s more from the Atlantic Division:
- Joel Embiid — the reigning MVP and current Eastern Conference Player of the Week — will miss the Sixers’ back-to-back set on Friday and Saturday, according to Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer (Twitter links). Saturday will mark Embiid’s fourth straight absence. He’s been dealing with a right ankle sprain, which he sustained last Friday vs. Toronto. Nicolas Batum (right hamstring strain) is also out Friday, but he’ll be back tomorrow against Chicago, Pompey tweets.
- The Celtics are shorthanded for Friday’s game against Toronto, with Al Horford (rest), Kristaps Porzingis (left calf — injury management) and Jayson Tatum (left ankle sprain — injury management) all out, relays Jared Weiss of The Athletic (via Twitter). It’s the second end of back-to-back for Boston, which defeated Detroit in overtime on Thursday.
- Jay King of The Athletic considers what moves the Celtics might make ahead of the trade deadline, noting that Boston has a $6.2MM trade exception acquired in the Grant Williams sign-and-trade. Considering how well the team has performed to this point, King doesn’t think the Celtics will make a major deal, but suggests a smaller move around the edges could make sense if it doesn’t negatively impact the locker room.
The game against the Pistons should me that this has nothing on that bench to count on they should’ve been able to sit the starters most of the game but instead Tatum played over 40m and went into overtime
I wouldn’t read into the bench performance. The whole team was not making threes and daresay playing down to their competition. Brown also didn’t play.
Better takeaway is Boston actually won a close game and seems like Porzingis/Holiday bring a toughness/winning mentality that’s been sorely missing from the core group. A step in the right direction after fumbling the game against Oakland. Still won’t buy it til they do it a few more times though.
Agreed Lil D.
And, the bench has been WAY better than people expected at the start of the season. Otherwise, the pundits would still be talking about the Celtics needing to make a major move for multiple bench pieces.
Our Celts learned first hand against Detroit that when their threes aren’t falling they just have to find other ways to win games. Celts threw up 26 threes in the first half and only 13 in the 2nd half. Found we can post KP or Tatum and score twos. Then, without KP and Tatum against Toronto, we had to find a third way to win; real team play. Of course All-Star-should-be D White was instrumental in both tight clutch game wins. Go Celtics!
So, basically, they wanna trade Finney-Smith and any trade package that includes him would be even slightly enhanced with him being a starter rather than a bench player.