Wizards vs Brooklyn

Man! What a 1-8 match up this is gonna be. The Wizards have fought hard through injury of a key aquisition at the deadline and have come into the playoffs as the hottest team in the East on a 12 game win streak and losing only 7 games since round 9, around the time they acquired LaVine. On the otherside of the coin we have Brooklyn who stumbled to end the season losing 10 straight since week 18 and only turning the corner on their season as week 20 ticked over and the play-ins started. Brooklyns form came together once they were actually able to see their team healthy after the "deadline" season Kyrie for Ingram deal. So why is a dominant team who has been in form all season need to fear a 9th placed playin team that has yet to really find their groove? Lets take a look...

Brooklyn

The Nets as mentioned have had an up and down season, finding form in the middle of the year, with the season bookended by large losing streaks and periods where they just struggled to get through. They were rumoured to nearly move their big Fin Lauri Markkanen while they were trying to find their groove, but the trade was passed over when their target became injured and the deal was shutdown. Fortunatley for the Nets they retained their big man who was an efficient scorer all season, and bringing in a respectable amount of rebounds each game. Murray has undeniably been their star all season though, scoring 26 per game which was good enough to be ranked 15th in the league and he's achieved it in a very playoff friendly way by being the 6th best free throw shooter in the league, while having the 15th most attempts this season.  Their third star was Brandon Ingram who as mentioned was brought in earlier in the season, we've only seen him for 33 games, but he'd put up 22 per game for the team, but maybe not at the efficency rate that Breece was hoping for when he picked him up from New Orleans.

Beyond the stars they have a very strong set of role players. When you have Bobby Portis, Derek Lively and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, followed by Alex Len, and Kelly Oubre to round out your top names you can see the quality that this team possesses and also the balance of skills that they possess.

I'm a bit of a fan of how this team is constructed around scoring and length and believe it can really throw a challenge to the Wiz.

Wizards

The Washington Wizards started pretty strong, then in the middle of the season the continued being strong, but then as you can see by their results at the end of the season they were really strong.  The team went through some dramatic changes during the season moving Paul George for LeBron James. This trade is quite notable in that they were able to achieve a deal that nabbed a star without paying a first rounder for the privillege.  It was also a trade that brought on Tristan Thompson, who has been playing starter minutes for the squad over the last 3 weeks, which coincided with their unbeaten streak. Now we know that Lebron and Thompson go hand in hand like peas and carrots, and we can see why, with Thompson averaging a double double in that span. Lebron has been scoring at will in his time in Washington, scoring nearly 30 a game with nearly 9 rebounds and 5 assistes. He's just elite and still a player you build a team around. The third player that really shines on this squad is Devin Booker, 27 points and similar to Murray in Brooklyn an excellent free throw shooter with a good attempt rate. Washington has the luxury of a 4th star in Clint Capela who chases 15 rebounds a game and puts up as many points. Another undeniable asset that is gonna give Brooklyn headaches in how to handle him.

The rest of the roster is filled out by a nice scorer off the bench in Eric Gordon, and some really quality players who don't demand the ball too much and let the stars handle the workload. Aaron Wiggins, Amir Coffey and Delon Wright are the handy players who do what you want without doing too much.

X Factors

There are two main factors that really play into Washingtons hands in this match up. Offensive rebounding and star power.  The offensive rebounding is always a factor in 2k, and while Alex Len and Derek Lively will do their best to contain Capela and Thompson they have a real challenge in ending the opponents possession with a defensive rebound.

The other factor is obvious star power, as much as talk around second bananas can irk some GMs there is no doubting that even Murray is probably a second banana in 2k, while Lebron and Booker are both at first banana level.  As noted in the team break downs the averages that the Washington stars all exceed the comparable star on the Nets.

The factor that does give Brooklyn a leg in is their length. Each of their players can go toe to toe with Washington and look down on them, this length causes troubles on both ends of the floor, we've seen long teams be just as successful as offensive rebounding teams in this league depending on the match up, just look at the Spurs.

Summary

The teams have met 3 times this season, and we've actually seen a close to full health match between the squads as recent as week 19 which saw the Wizards be the victor. Washington put them away by 20 points, but what we saw is that Washington was already in playoff form with an 8 player rotation, while we saw Brooklyn going 10 deep. We also saw a change in the forward rotation from Brooklyn in week 20 that might shake up the result at the end of the series. I'm a Nets believer and support underdogs way too often. I think we will see them grab two games from Washington and I wouldn't be surprised to see them push for a 7th game. I think this will be a very exciting series considering where Brooklyn ended thier season.