You can correct me if I’m wrong in the comments below, but, prior to tonight’s dreadful Nets’ blowout loss at home at the hands of the Chicago Bulls, I thought when NBA teams are pushed up against the wall between making the playoffs and missing out, they played their hardest in an effort to get needed wins.
Maybe for most teams in the league, that’s the case. Clearly, though, for your Brooklyn Nets, it’s not. When presented a chance to gain a vital game over the idle Indiana Pacers by playing the Joakim Noah-less Bulls at Barclays, they laid an even bigger egg in terms of non-existent effort for over 40 minutes than they did last night in a 96-73 loss to the Bucks. Pretty crazy, no?
At near full-strength, with a virtual tie between them and the Pacers, the Nets knew they could continue to control their own postseason destiny by locking up a win on their own home floor. Granted, they’ve had problems with Chicago all year, even going back to their seven-game opening series loss to the Bulls in the 2013 Eastern Conference playoffs, but there’s a certain point–for a team chock full of veterans–at which the team needs to realize the import of a game or a series of games.
Either the Nets never did this and for some reason didn’t know they really, really had to win this one or they frankly don’t care about making the playoffs at all, and just want to head into an extended offseason. I hope the truth is a mixture of the two because this loss wasn’t solely due to missed three-pointers (such as yesterday’s to an extent), hot shooting from the Bulls (not hot shooting, but you can’t expect good teams to miss as many open looks as Chicago got) or anything else really.
This loss–the seeds of which were planted in the first quarter in which the Bulls took a sizable lead they would never relinquish–was due to a rosterful of players not rotating on defense, missing point-blank shots, committed lazy fouls, allowing back-breaking offensive rebounds and some of the stupidest passes leading to Chicago points that I’ve seen since the NCAA Tournament.
There’s still a chance the Nets make the postseason, but likely won’t do much against the No. 1 seed Hawks, if they do sneak in. However, after losses like yesterday’s and today’s, does the team even want to? It shouldn’t be too hard to ask a team of professional basketball players to step up in the 11th hour, with no room for error left. Unfortunately for the Nets, and mostly their fans, that request went unheard tonight.
Assorted thoughts: The only Nets who were somewhat decent today were Joe Johnson (12 points on 5-for-9 shooting), Brook Lopez (13 points and eight rebounds), Jarrett Jack ( 15 points on 7-for-14 shooting) and Bojan Bogdanovic (17 points), and even all of them were sieve-like on defense. Once again, Deron Williams and Thaddeus Young couldn’t do anything on offense (combined to go 6-for-24 from the floor for 17 points) which really serve to do the Nets in….As bad as the offense was–with the sub-40 percent shooting and all–the defense was even worse. Five Bulls scored in double figures and Nikola Mirotic and Pau Gasol each scored 22 points or more. Mirotic–6-for-11 from three–dominated the Nets from the perimeter and Pau led the charge down low, along with mid-range jumpers that you knew were going in just as he released the ball. For much of the game, the Bulls didn’t even have to work too hard for their shots. They just had to make a few passes, get the Nets out of position and they’d find themselves wide open from 18 feet. A good portion of NBA teams would win easily when going up against such porous defense.
Onto the next one: Wednesday night at Barclays against the Magic. If the Nets win that game, and the Pacers lose either to the Wizards tomorrow or Grizzlies on Wednesday, they’ll be in the playoffs.
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