Keon Ellis is set to give the Brooklyn Nets a different look right away.
Ellis is expected to start Tuesday night against the Charlotte Hornets in Brooklyn’s preseason opener, according to sources from NetsKingdom. It will be his Nets debut, and it comes with rookie Mikel Brown Jr. sidelined by a left ankle sprain.
Brown is expected to play during preseason, and Brian Lewis of the New York Post confirmed he has been cleared for contact practice. For now, though, Ellis slides into the lineup and into a backcourt role alongside Egor Dëmin, with the second-year guard sharing ball-handling responsibilities with Julius Randle.
That setup puts a real defensive weapon on the floor for Brooklyn. Ellis brings point-of-attack pressure and should see time on Charlotte rookie Christian Anderson as well as veteran Dennis Schröder, a former Net.
The fit with coach Jordi Fernández is obvious. Fernández leans on an aggressive defensive scheme, and Ellis’ game matches that approach. The 6-foot-4 guard has elite per-100-possession defensive numbers, sitting in the high 90th percentile across the board.
His 2.7 steals rank 93rd, his 1.5 blocks rank 95th, his 6.4 deflections rank 96th, his 1.6 turnovers forced rank 96th and his stop percentage ranks 98th.
Ellis is active with his hands in rotation and when closing out on drivers, using quick feet to stay square and get into position for a steal or a block.
Brooklyn is hoping that kind of impact helps it get back to the defensive level it flashed last December, when the Nets finished with the No. 1 defensive rating in the league for the month, ahead of a contending team like the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Opponents averaged just 104.6 points per game that month, a sharp drop from the 113-plus points Brooklyn was giving up earlier in the season. The Nets’ December stretch included a 120-point loss to the Golden State Warriors on Dec. 29 and an 81-point win over the Toronto Raptors on Dec. 21.
The other part of the equation is offense. Brooklyn is coming off a season in which it tied Sacramento for the worst shooting percentage in the league at 34%, and it badly needs that number to move in the right direction.
Ellis’ arrival won’t fix everything, but it could be one piece of the puzzle. The first look comes Tuesday night against Charlotte.
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Nets New-Look Rotation Just Gave Fans A Reason To Buy In
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Michael Porter Jr. led the way with 16 points, while Julius Randle added 13 as Brooklyns offensive flow looked sharper than it has at other points in the exhibition slate. It is still preseason, of course, but the combination of perimeter shooting and control for long stretches gave the Nets something tangible to point to as they continue sorting out how this rotation fits together. [Read more 🡒]