For the first three games of their season series, two of which were won by Milwaukee, the Nets and Bucks played extremely close and exciting basketball, with two of the games being decided in three overtimes. However, this afternoon, in the most important–for playoff purposes–matchup between the two teams this season, it was the least enthralling affair.
After a close first half, which saw the home team Bucks lead by a 43-41 score, the wheels fell off Brooklyn’s proverbial bus in the third quarter. Milwaukee used a 14-0 run in the frame to build a 20-point lead as the Nets couldn’t make any sort of shot, regardless of how open. That advantage was whittled down to 14 points heading into the fourth quarter, but Brooklyn was never able to make another push and faded away quietly.
Early on, the Nets looked pretty good on offense, moving the ball well to get high-percentage looks. However, as the game went on, they started to eschew their chances close to the rim in favor of contested–and some open–jumpers that wouldn’t fall all afternoon. When you miss 14 of your 15 three-point attempts to start a game, it’s never easy to win and the Nets know that more than most teams.
With Alan Anderson (ankle) out for the fifth-straight game, Brooklyn was a rotation player short yet again and could have used Anderson’s shooting ability and one-on-one defensive skills to hang with the uber-athletic Bucks, who just out-hustled and out-jumped the older Nets all game. Milwaukee isn’t a good matchup for the Nets at all, but this game would have been much, much closer if Joe Johnson, Deron Williams and Bojan Bogdanovic didn’t collectively go 1-for-12 from three.
Assorted thoughts: Deron didn’t shot well from anywhere on the floor in this one, missing 10 of his 11 field goal attempts with three turnovers. He has played well lately but with his shot, along with Joe’s (3-for-9) and Bojan’s (4-for-11) and Thaddeus’ (4-for-14) and Brook’s (3-for-8), being off, Brooklyn just didn’t have much of a chance. There are some games in which nothing goes in and those rare occurrences can be written off as aberrations and forgetting about. Yet, when they happen in near must-win situations at the very end of the regular season, they hurt even more and are even less explainable….Milwaukee shot almost 20 percentage points better from the field than the Nets did. I don’t have stats on this, but I doubt teams that shot 30 percent from the field while giving up 50 percent shooting win very often….The Nets committed 20 turnovers in this game. Twenty. That led to 23 Milwaukee points and helped prevent Brooklyn from ever developing a rhythm of any kind on offense….With his 12 points, Brook Lopez passed Jason Kidd (ironic, huh) as the Nets’ fourth-leading scorer in franchise history. Brook never got going himself but wasn’t given a ton of good looks or even passed the ball that much in the post. He did grab 10 rebounds, though, making for his third double-double of the month of April….Brooklyn is now eliminated from catching Milwaukee as the No. 6 seed. With the Celtics’ win over the Cavaliers, Boston is one game ahead of the Nets as the No. 7 seed. Brooklyn is also two games ahead of the Miami Heat and is a half-game ahead of the Pacers, who play the Thunder tonight.
Onto the next one: Tomorrow night at Barclays against the Bulls. Suddenly a playoff berth doesn’t seem so inevitable.
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