Eric Freeman, of Yahoo! Sports’ Ball Don’t Lie basketball blog, put it best:
The Nets died as they lived: indifferently.
— Eric Freeman (@freemaneric) May 2, 2015
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With their painful, tough-to-watch, punchless Game 6 loss at the hands of the Atlanta Hawks–by a ___ margin–the Nets poetically ended their 2014-15 season as they started it: without much effort at all.
Back on October 29th, in their season opener against the Celtics at the TD Garden, the Nets lost 121-105 in a game that didn’t feature much, if any at all, defensive tact by Brooklyn. Boston ended up being decent this season but that game, and the rapid succession of losses that followed, indicated a long season was ahead. The Nets managed to eek into the playoffs and gave the Hawks a fight for six games, but, in the end, got dominated in a must-win game without seeming to give a damn.
The Nets played well in the first half, even after a first quarter in which they fell behind 36-23, but absolutely fell apart in the third quarter. Atlanta rolled off a 27-7 run to go ahead 78-52 after leading by just six points at the intermission. How did the Hawks send the undead Nets to their rightful grave? With smart passing, the making of open shots and forcing turnovers on a Brooklyn team that was throwing the ball around with reckless abandon.
Brooklyn, with a manageable halftime deficit, realistically had a shot to push Atlanta and possibly win this game to force a Game 7. But once DeMarre Carroll and Kyle Korver combined to score the third quarter’s first nine points, both teams, the Barclays Center crowd and the broadcasters knew it was over. The Nets essentially packed it in 20 minutes early while the Hawks kept piling on with uncontested threes.
The last quarter-and-a-half was garbage time, more or less, which is pretty hard to imagine during an elimination playoff game at home. But, as we’ve seen all season, the Nets are an enigma, and an enigma that seems to be pretty disinterested at times, even at the most important time of the year.
Assorted thoughts: There isn’t much to break down or analyze from this game other than that Brook Lopez should have taken 20-25 shots a game in this series because of his insane size advantage over Al Horford and Paul Millsap and that Deron Williams actually looked decent. D-Will made a bunch of jumpers but also committed some brutally poor turnovers that allowed Atlanta to bust the game open….For the most part, everyone else was terrible. While the game was still close, though, I would have liked to see Jerome Jordan get some minutes, considering how bad Mason Plumlee was in his limited time….The perimeter defense was the worst it’s been this whole series. Atlanta (mostly Korver, who was 6-10 from three) was allowed to take wide open triples all night and made a good amount of them. It’s easy to blow teams out like that….The Nets won two more games than most people thought they would and gave the Barclays Center crowd great, fun basketball for two-plus games. That’s a positive note. The negative note is that the Nets have an insanely high payroll, owe their higher first round pick to the Hawks and have a ridiculously uncertain and mortgaged future. Still, it’s been a mostly fun 88 games this season and I’m going to miss the every-other-night schedule of games. For the few people who regularly read Brooklyn Balling, it’s been a blast and I appreciate the support, be it vocal or silent. In the end, basketball is a sport, and sports are supposed to be fun, not bothersome. The Nets certainly try their hardest to make it nerveracking, but it’s a game at heart and not nearly as important as most things in life. So, Nets fans, appreciate the third-consecutive playoff season and be positive for 2015-16 in a weak Eastern Conference with a (hopefully) much healthier team. And, as always, don’t be afraid to let me know how I’m doing (email: [email protected]) or just send a question, comment or other concern. All feedback is appreciated. Finally, I would like to thank you all for following along for another year, my fourth covering this team on a regular basis. You’re all the best.
Onto the next one: The Hawks start their second round series with the Wizards and Paul Pierce this Sunday while the Nets go golfing, which might be what they wanted all along.
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