Nets Suddenly Find A Fragile Success For five weeks, just about everything fell apart for the Nets, including their coaching staff's dynamic and most players" health. Now everything appears to be falling into place. They put together a three-game winning streak (which ended Friday at Detroit) and streamlined their coaching staff and their defenses. Lawrence Frank is no longer directing the defense, and for the first time this season, the Nets held their opponents to less than 100 points in three straight games. Most important, Deron Williams, who returned after missing nine games with a sprained ankle, is delivering the commanding point-guard play the team desperately needs. "What the Nets need the most is a penetrator who can get in the middle and make plays," Celtics Coach Brad Stevens said Tuesday before his team lost, 104-96, at Barclays Center. Referring to Williams, he added: "They have one of the best in the league just sitting there. And now he's playing. They've got a lot of really good players, and those players are going to be enhanced by Deron Williams being on the court. Williams scored 25 points against Boston's vaunted perimeter defense Tuesday. He then fought to a draw with Chris Paul, widely considered the best point guard in the N.B.A., in Thursday's 102-93 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers. The Nets" roster is full of players smart enough to make the right read and skilled enough to finish open plays, but players like Joe Johnson and Kevin Garnett are most effective when someone creates opportunities for them. With his bounce and burst, Williams does just that, instilling confidence in his teammates. Describing Williams's role, Brook Lopez said, "The energy he gives us out there, the composure, the leadership, and other teams have to respect him." As so often happens on the basketball court, chemistry and confidence on one end lead to effectiveness on the other. With the Nets scoring better recently than they have all season, opponents are inbounding the ball after Nets baskets rather than rebounding and running. This gives the Nets" ambling big men time to retreat on defense. The first half of Thursday's game against the Clippers showed the progress the Nets had made on defense. Early on, Paul and Blake Griffin combined to rip open the middle of the Nets" pick-and-roll coverage. Griffin was able to receive the ball in space, with a head of steam to the rim. But in the second quarter, the Nets started swarming the middle and putting bodies on Griffin before he could hit his launch point. Under Coach Jason Kidd's direction, the Nets forced Paul into the role of a scorer rather than a distributor. Paul scored 20 points, but he had only two assists, by far his lowest single-game total of the season. After the Clippers" hot start, "Jason switched up some of the schemes," Garnett said. Surprisingly, Lopez, not Garnett, was the key to the Nets" second-quarter surge. Lopez let himself be drawn into one-on-one confrontations with Paul, and used his size to force Paul away from the rim and into tough jump shots. When the Clippers went with a smaller second-half lineup to draw Lopez away from the rim, he burned them with post-ups on the other end. Garnett seemed optimistic that the Nets could continue to improve their defense if they could stay healthy and get time on the court together. "Our biggest problem was communication," Garnett said. Jason has us just talking, just communicating. And whatever the schemes are, whatever the coverage is, we're trusting it. Lopez echoed Garnett, noting that the scheme would not always be perfect, but that trust and communication could help them scramble successfully. "It helps foster a solution," Lopez said. He added, "It may not always be perfect, it may not always be correct, but the communication helps fix that." Another recent development is the migration of Paul Pierce to the Nets" bench. Facing second units, Pierce deals with lesser defenders and also has the run of the offense, often acting as the de facto point guard. What Williams does for the first unit, Pierce does for the reserves. He keeps the offense churning. It is no surprise that Pierce looks comfortable as the star of the bench because he has played a leading role since he entered the league. Pierce's replacement in the starting lineup, Alan Anderson, has animated the first five with his defensive versatility and open-court ability. He may be only an average athlete for an N.B.A. wing, but that is a big improvement for the Nets, who have created the fewest fast-break opportunities in the league. For all that went well for the Nets in the past week, Friday's 103-99 loss at Detroit reminded them of their precarious situation. With Lopez on the bench after spraining his left ankle against the Clippers, the Pistons" Andre Drummond ravaged the Nets" frontcourt for points and rebounds. Despite all of the Nets" off-season additions, it is possible that no adjustment can mitigate the loss of Lopez or Williams. Kidd's words after Thursday's game might be a theme for the Nets" season: "The trust factor on the defensive end has now led to better ball moving on the offensive end and guys getting shots. But the biggest thing is our health.