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As the Brooklyn Nets ” Big Three ” of Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving continue to work on building their chemistry on the court, Irving and Harden had a brief conversation in practice this week to clarify. their roles.
“We established that maybe four days ago now,” Irving said after the Nets’ 134-117 win over the Golden State Warriors on Saturday. “I just looked at him, and I said, ‘You’re the point guard, and I’m going to play marksman.’ It was that easy. “
Irving described the conversation as concise and to the point.
“It wasn’t a mystical conversation that we had,” Irving said.
In Saturday’s game against the Warriors, Harden had 16 assists, increasing his average to 11.3 assists per game since joining the Nets in mid-January. That’s the most assists he has distributed since the 2016-17 season, when he led the league with 11.2 assists per game for the Houston Rockets.
“He took control of the responsibilities and did an amazing job,” Irving said. “It makes my job easier to go out and play for free and just play.”
When Harden – a multi-sea scoring champion – was added to the Nets’ mix, a paramount question was: will one basketball be enough?
Harden had discussed with head coach Steve Nash his willingness to play the necessary role when he arrived from Houston.
On Saturday against the Warriors, Harden, Irving and Durant scored or assisted on 100 points for Brooklyn. Saturday marked the seventh game the trio have played together – including last week’s game with the Toronto Raptors, in which Durant was ripped off the ground early due to the league’s coronavirus protocols.
Their overall record is 5-2, including the loss to the Raptors that Durant couldn’t finish.
“I came to this team knowing they have two special scorers on this team,” said Harden. “Obviously I score when I need to, but as long as I involve everyone and Ky (Irving) gets the shots he wants, KD gets the shots he wants, it’s pretty effective. Offensively that’s not the problem for us, we can score in clusters, it’s defensively. It looks like we’ve got a pace lately. We just need to keep the pace. “
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