Another day in the life of a miserable Nets fan. In their absolutely worst performance of the season to date, the Nets lost to a terrible team in the Detroit Pistons who only had one road win and six total wins coming into this game. The Pistons, who benefited greatly from Ben Gordon’s return from injury, jumped out to a big, double-digit lead int he 2nd quarter and extended it to a game-high of 18 points in the 3rd quarter. In a rare positive sign from this game, the Nets came back from that lead and cut it to 2 points with 8:27 left in the 4th. The Piston lead remained at a few points until a Brandon Knight 3-pointer at 4:26 put the Nets down six and essentially clinched the win for Detroit.
As usual, the Nets’ big scorer in this game was Deron Williams who righted his shooting stroke with a 34-point, 6 3-pointer, 8-9 free throw outing. For much of this game, Deron, like normal, was the only Net who showed any sense of life on offense when the Nets were down big and fighting to come back in the game. Jordan Farmar continued his strong play with a couple of big shots leading to his 22 points of the bench coming on 8-13 shooting from the field. D-Will and Farmar got no help from their sharpshooters as Shawne Williams and Anthony Morrow combined for a pitiful 10 points on 5-24 shooting from the both of them. Morrow, playing with a heavy heart due to his grandmother’s recent passing, could be excused for the performance but Williams definitely cannot be. He has been disgraceful in recent game and there is no reason that he should be on the court anymore.
Another reason as to why the Nets played so poorly was due to the terrible defensive and rebounding efforts they gave throughout the game. The Nets’ perimeter d was acceptable, limiting Detroit to 2-9 3-pointers, but the interior d was god-awful, allowing 50 points in the paint to the Pistons in addition to giving Detroit multiple shot opportunities by lieu of poor defensive rebounding. Guys like Jerebko and Greg Monroe feasted off of the glass en route to their 16 and 20 points respectively. Kris Humphries seemed like the only Nets crashing the boards at times and ended up snatching eight offensive and eight defensive rebounds in this one for a solid total of 16.
Some other observations I had from the game: Shawne Williams needs to be released, or traded, or even sent to the D-League (I’m not sure if the rules allow for this) as soon as possible. All he does on offense now is stand around the perimeter and hoist up shots that are a few feets away from going in. I’m not sure what got lost in his shot from the move to the Nets from the Knicks but he needs to find it fast…Not sure why Jordan Williams only got 11 minutes of playing time as he played well down low and even had the highest +/- of any player in the game, on both the Nets and Pistons, for that matter. The team really seems to play better with him out there…Even though he only had three points and was in foul trouble, Keith Bogans has served as a nice veteran, defensive-minded replacement for the injured DeShawn Stevenson who isn’t expected back until mid-February…The turnover number were a lot better tonight than they have been recently. The Nets only gave up the ball 12 times and no player had more than three by themselves.
Looking Ahead
The Nets head up to Detroit to take on this very Pistons team on Friday at the Palace of Auburn Hills to (hopefully) exact their revenge on this Pistons team.
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