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| Brandon Jennings is a really hot and cold player, tonight, he was pretty damn hot |
An 11th game against the Milwaukee Bucks, an 11th-straight loss for the New Jersey Nets against the Bucks. The injury-hampered Nets team just couldn’t score enough points to offset Brandon Jennings’ unstoppable 30-point performance. As stated in my earlier preview of the game, the Nets needed to stop the perimeter scoring of Jennings and Monta Ellis tonight in order to win, but, of course, that didn’t happen at all.
Early on, both teams slugged through the game and didn’t really show much intensity until the end of the 2nd quarter, when Milwaukee distanced itself from the Nets to take an 11-point halftime lead. Then, the Nets fought back to make it a close game towards the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th quarters. However, the Bucks distanced themselves once again after a Kris Humphries jump-shot cut the Milwaukee lead to 84-83 at the 6:16 of the final quarter.
Once again without Deron Williams (calf), the Nets took most of the game to find their offensive groove. The two Geralds (Green and Wallace) took the charge on offense for New Jersey as Green scored 16 points on 6-12 shooting while Wallace scored 18 on 7-12 shooting to go along with 11 rebounds. I don’t even care anymore if we don’t get to keep the lottery pick we gave up for Wallace anymore because he, in his limited time with the Nets, has given the team much-needed veteran presence, intensity, and defensive talent which can’t always be quantified in the box score. I hope he, and Green (who is an unrestricted after the season) return next season because they form one of the better starter-to-bench small forward tandems in the whole NBA.
Some other observations I had from the game: For a team with a slim shot of still making the playoffs, the Bucks seemed to be extremely disinterested in the game. I know they won but with how bad the Nets played early on, more intensity from Milwaukee would have been able to put away the game much earlier than the 4th quarter…Marshon Brooks has broken through his rookie wall as well as East Germans broke through the Berlin Wall. Yes, I just dropped some global history within context of a Nets game…Johan Petro and Sundiata Gaines actually played decent basketball. I must give credit where it’s due even if it isn’t deserved at when looked at over the course of a full season…Ersan Ilyasova continues to kill the Nets; he had a pretty good 17-point, 17-rebound effort last night. He’s also a free agent this summer and I would be shocked if Billy King didn’t make a significant push to sign him for Brooklyn…Beno Udrih only played 10 minutes, presumably due to the Bucks’ point guard clog with Ellis and Jennings. Udrih deserves better than that and if D-Will actually does leave the Nets this offseason, I would have no problem with the Nets going after Udrih in a trade to back-up Jordan Farmar, who would probably start…Shelden Williams also missed last night’s game (knee). It’s simply crazy why the Nets are so much worse at rebounding when he isn’t playing and are so much better when he does.
Looking Ahead
The final Nets’ home game in New Jersey is on Monday night against the 76ers at the Prudential Center. I’m going and will be seeing the finale ceremony with all of the former greats of the “New Jersey” Nets franchise. You know, like Derrick Coleman (hahaha).
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