Vaughn: Dinwiddie will find his range

Nets coach Jacque Vaughn knows Spencer Dinwiddie’s shooting will come around. The guard, who is 4-for-22 from the field in his past two games, has made those shots before and Vaughn knows he will make them again.

But while Dinwiddie contributes in other areas, with “scoring being secondary,” he said, his 2-point (40.3 percent) and 3-point (28.8 percent) shooting numbers have dipped since his return to Brooklyn at the trade deadline. Dinwiddie went 0-for-11 from the field in a loss to the Magic on Sunday, the second game in the past six weeks in which he attempted more than five shots and missed them all.

Before the first instance, Feb. 24 against the Bulls, that hadn’t happened to Dinwiddie since December 2021.

“I’m not here to make excuses,” Dinwiddie said following practice Tuesday. “Just missed shots [against Orlando] and obviously was a big factor in costing our team a win.”

Vaughn said one reason for the altered shooting numbers could stem from what the Nets have asked Dinwiddie to contribute in other areas. They’re requiring “a lot,” Vaughn said, such as playing nearly 40 minutes per game and sparking the offense while also defending a “pretty good dude on the other end of the floor.”

Then there’s the pace: Vaughn tends to have the Nets play fast. There’s the different spacing, a different role and the emergence of other offensive options, with Mikal Bridges, who has averaged 26.8 points per game since he was acquired from the Suns three days after Dinwiddie’s arrival from Dallas, taking pressure off Dinwiddie.

“I think you can just look at the data across the board on our guys playing with us conversely to the team’s that they came from,” Vaughn said. “So you add those things up, and the looks are just different at times.”

Asked how Dinwiddie has navigated stretches such as this before, Vaughn noted he has the proper shot process. The 29-year-old knows where his attempts will come from, and the misses aren’t due to poor selection, necessarily.

“That’s just basketball,” center Nic Claxton said. “You’re going to have games where guys miss shots. Even the best shooters have games where they’re not hitting, stretches where they’re not hitting. He’s been doing a great job of facilitating offense, though. Finding guys, he’s been getting a lot of assists.

“He definitely keeps our offense afloat.”

➤ The Nets signed Moses Brown to a second 10-day contract Tuesday, the team announced, continuing their recent approach of keeping another center on their roster.

“Just seeing him on the floor, I’ve enjoyed having him in the gym,” Vaughn said. “I enjoy talking to him. … He’s 23 years old, he’s long, he can run the floor.”

➤ Seth Curry (personal reasons), Royce O’Neale (left knee soreness) and Edmond Sumner (right hip contusion), who missed the game Sunday against the Magic, all participated in practice Tuesday. Sumner will get a “closer look” Wednesday. Vaughn wants him to “wake up the next day, see if you can move a little bit.”