MOSCOW, November 27 (R-Sport) – US basketball team the Brooklyn Nets is too focused on elaborate offensive plays at the expense of scoring easier baskets in the paint, the team’s Russian forward Andrei Kirilenko told R-Sport on Wednesday.
Brooklyn is second-to-last in the Atlantic Division of the National Basketball Association’s Eastern Conference on a 4-10 record, a disappointing result given that the Russian oligarch-backed team has by far the league’s highest payroll.
“We don’t get enough easy points,” said Kirilenko, who has played just four games this season due to back spasms. “The team’s fighting, the team’s trying, but something is not right in basketball terms.”
The weakness is that Brooklyn plays “a lot of combinations so that a guy can shoot,” he said. “We get free throws, but we’re not concentrating much on scoring from under the hoop, after fouls, on quick breaks.”
Kirilenko added: “We’re scoring 60 or 70 percent for the team, but that’s just medium and long-range shots and we’re not trying to get inside and get points there.”
In July, six-foot-nine-tall forward Kirilenko became the only Russian to have signed for the Nets since billionaire Russian metals magnate Mikhail Prokhorov bought the team in 2010.
The Nets hosts the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday.
