It feels like some sort of cruel joke at this point. Not only are the Nets 11-31 but they also mired in draft pick mortgage debt hell for the near-future. Then, to top it off, they compete in a good portion of their games, but mostly lose them. That’s what happened tonight in Toronto, as Brooklyn fell 112-100 in possibly the most frustrating loss in a season full of frustrating losses.
As a life-long Nets fan, I’ve watched my fair share of disappointing Nets basketball, be it based in East Rutherford, Newark or The Better Borough. There was the the back-to-back NBA Finals losses in the early 2000s, the consecutive seasons ended in the postseason by the Miami Heat, the 12-70 season, the aimless 22-44 final season in New Jersey, the debut Brooklyn season resulting in the brutal seven-game loss to the Bulls and the last two subpar years being finalized by earlier-than-expected playoff exits.
But, the current 2015-16 campaign is right up there with all of those ignominious campaigns, covered in failure and unmet expectations. In fact, the most recent loss, for this incarnation of the Brooklyn Nets, which is sure to look much different in the 2016-17 season, kind of mirrored my years of fandom with this team.
The Nets started Monday’s night affair with a lot of energy and subsequent near-perfect execution on both the offensive and defensive ends of the floor. Joe Johnson was making threes, Brook Lopez locked down the paint and even Bojan Bogdanovic knocked down a triple. Brooklyn found itself up 29-19 after the first quarter and it actually looked like the Nets had a shot at a big win over division rival Toronto, which is having a great season.
Alas, like how the Finals losses to the Kobe-and-Shaq Lakers and Robinson-and-Duncan Spurs beat back the upstart Nets, the second quarter tonight, in which the Raptors outscored Brooklyn to take a halftime lead, quickly reassured fans that this game would be similar to the 30 losses prior to it. The Nets’ bench, led by Shane Larkin, Markel Brown, Thomas Robinson and Willie Reed, made sure that the double-digit advantage would disappear as soon as it was built and they did a quick job of it.
Like the many lost years in New Jersey where, outside of the few Eastern Conference semifinals appearances, there was no enjoyable aspect to the team outside of the latter years of Vince Carter and Jason Kidd’s careers, the second quarter was the mark of an team without direction and without much of a plan to combat the Raptors’ surge, led by Kyle Lowry, who finished the game with 31 points.
Brooklyn came out of the half with some purpose, for once, like how the enticement of the team crossing the Hudson River increased fan interest in the “other New York basketball team.” Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez got involved in the offense again and the points kept flowing (35 in the third quarter, actually). The Nets got Toronto in the bonus early in the frame and exploited that advantage often for a bunch of free and quick points.
Finally, the move to New York, to a nice and new arena that was the Nets’ alone, not to be shared with a hockey team that had experienced much more success than it’s similarly obscure co-tenant, brought some respect and adulation to the franchise. Even Willie Reed made a layup, hearkening back to the first year in Brooklyn when it seemed like everyone on the team got into the fray and produced — looking at you, current Toronto assistant coach Jerry Stackhouse.
The Nets were up 84-81 heading into the fourth, just 12 minutes away from their 12th win of the season. However, the optimism established in the prior quarter went away as soon as it did with the team following the future-altering trade for Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Jason Terry. Toronto scored on six of its first eight possessions of the frame to take a four-point lead, its biggest since the second quarter, 96-92.
Remember, though, that the Nets — with Paul Pierce making a certain jumper and blocking a certain Kyle Lowry shot — beat these very Raptors in the first round of the 2014 playoffs, only to lose to LeBron’s Heat in the following round. Still, the series win, the first in Brooklyn got some life back into the organization, and thinks could fathomably be described as looking up.
A 6-2 spurt from Thad Young, Lopez and Larkin drew Brooklyn even with the Raptors at 98 apiece with over six minutes to play, and it looked like we had a tight, competitive game headed our way. But, a missed defensive assignment from Joe resulted in a wide open three for Terrence Ross and then a Thad turnover gave Ross a wide open fastbreak dunk just seconds later. The Nets were down 103-98 and would go on to just score two more points the rest of the game, losing by 12 in a result that was much closer than the final tallies would indicate. Of course, this symbolized the current state of the Nets, who fell back to reality with a thud at the end of regulation, since they just aren’t very good.
Didn’t the Nets play pretty well on the road against one of the Eastern Conference’s better teams for over 3.5 quarters, an inquisitive mind may ask? Why yes, they did, but there’s a reason NBA games are 48 minutes long, not 36, and there’s no spot on ESPN’s standings page for “games led at the end of three quarters.” There are no moral victories in sports, and certainly no consolation for losing with a team that doesn’t even have the benefit of its assuredly high draft pick.
Isn’t it nice that Brook Lopez posted 29 points and 10 rebounds? What about Joe’s 22 points on 12 shots and seven assists? Or Donald Sloan and Thaddeus Young’s near double-doubles? Yeah, it is, but, for a team trying to finally realize the success it envisioned when it left the swamps of The Meadowlands or the bustle of downtown Newark, second-place finishes in races of two don’t mean anything.
I’m not sure how to fix this team — tonight’s problem certainly wasn’t effort, it was execution — but I do know for a fact that there is no TV infomercial quick fix. The best 36 minutes of basketball ever played is nary a footnote if it’s followed by 12 minutes of bad basketball. History doesn’t care about the guy that made the telephone after Alexander Graham Bell did, or the guy that ran just slower than Jesse Owens, just like history won’t care about a 24-58 Brooklyn Nets team.
Onto the next one: The Cavaliers in Brooklyn on Wednesday. Cleveland just crushed by the Warriors tonight, so the game in two days probably won’t go too well for the home team.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
