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The Nets finished off their home-stand with a nice and relatively easy 97-87 win over the hapless Charlotte Bobcats. The Nets looked very solid in all aspects of the game and most importantly, they shot a lot better than they did in last night’s loss to the Thunder. Granted, the Bobcats were missing a ton of players due to injury like Augustin who got hurt in the 1st quarter, and Corey Maggette, Reggie Williams, and D.J. White who didn’t even play at all.
After a really slow start for the Nets which resulted in a 7-0 Bobcats’ lead to start the game, the Nets found their stride offensively and by the end of the 1st quarter, built a 7-point lead that they would basically keep for the rest of the game. This game had all of the makings of a blow-out by the end of the 1st half as the Nets had built up a solid 58-42 lead. However, the Bobcats made a few runs in the 2nd half to bring the lead under 10 but really couldn’t make it any closer and the Nets prevailed for their 2nd home win of the season.
One night after ripping the Prudential Center for having a bad shooting background, Deron Williams and Anthony Morrow rebounded and found their shots scoring 19 points apiece. Deron also came excruciatingly close to his first career triple-double, coming up a rebound-shy of the traditional points, rebounds, assists triple-double that Nets fans saw witnessed frequently from Jason Kidd. However, Deron couldn’t shake his turnover bug as he committed 6 more against Charlotte. I still haven’t been able to think of a cause for his recent turnover issues but I guess I’ll just have to chalk it up to him trying to do too much by himself in the absence of Brook Lopez.
The battle of the rookies between Kemba Walker and Marshon Brooks that I highlighted in the preview post was fairly even but I’ll give the edge to Marshon. Kemba (16 points, 6 rebounds) was forced to take some bad shots and was put in bad situations because of all the Charlotte injuries. Disregarding his few inefficiencies, Kemba looks like a really good scoring shooting guard who was playing out of position because of the injury to Augustin.
Marshon (20 pts, 6 rebs) played like his usual self with his array of deep jump-shots, mid-range shots, and funky lay-ups at the hoop and made some plays that left me shaking my head thinking how lucky the Nets were that he fell as far in the 1st round as he did. He seriously has the potential to become an All-Star in this league and he is only going to get better as he improves his shot selection and decision-making.
Some other observations I had from the game: Shawne Williams returned from his injury and played some solid defense on the interior even though he still didn’t have his shot which has been absent since he joined the Nets…Johan Petro hasn’t played in two of the three games on this past home-stand, including tonight, and the Nets have won both games, tonight and on Wednesday against Golden State. Coincidence?, I think not…DeShawn Stevenson only played 15 minutes and didn’t score any points, he has only scored 11 points in his last 6 games. I don’t know what’s wrong with him but he really hasn’t seemed like his Mavericks-self with the Nets so far this season, maybe he’s hurt…Gerald Henderson has turned into a consistent scorer and he has finally started to live up to the huge expectations he had coming out of Duke, he’s a nice player…Bismack Biyombo reminds me of Derrick Favors, a huge, athletic talent who needs to refine his shot in order to become a star. Watch, in a few years, Biyombo will be a consistent 15-10 player in the mold of a short Dwight Howard.
Note: My prediction for tonight’s score from my earlier preview actually turned out to be pretty close to the final score as I was only 2 points off for the Nets and 3 points off for the Bobcats. I would call that pretty successful.
Looking Ahead
The Nets head to Chicago to take on the injury-depleted Bulls team tomorrow at the United Center, the game is at 8 pm on YES.
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