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| Tonight was the first game in which Paul Pierce has scored more than 20 points as a Net. He played like the Paul Pierce of the Celtics, scoring all over the floor in a variety of ways. |
Wednesday's night's Nets-Wizards game can be summed up in one word: rebounds.
Washington grabbed twenty (not a typo) more rebounds than Brooklyn did, and outrebounded the Nets on the offensive glass by an equally-staggering 14-rebound margin. Trevor Booker collected nine of those rebounds, giving his team a ton of additional scoring chances (14 more field goal attempts than the Nets). Whenever Brooklyn played solid defense and got an important stop, it seemed, the Wizards responded with a second-chance via offensive rebound and usually capitalized. If playing defense for 24 seconds is hard enough, then playing it for 48 seconds is very difficult.
The Nets were efficient early on from the field, converting on five of their first seven possessions and building a slim lead, the only one they would hold in the entire game. After a Trevor Ariza three-pointer at the 8:33 mark of the first, Washington took a 12-10 lead and would maintain said advantage until the game clock expired after the fourth quarter. Brooklyn cut it, down from double-digits, to one in the final frame, but was never able to break through to regain the lead.
In the fourth quarter, the Wizards were up by as much as 12, but the Nets never truly went away, even though they couldn't overcome their deficit.
With Jason Kidd's strongest lineup on the floor–Deron, Joe, Paul, KG, and Brook–basket came easy and allowed the Nets to whittle the Washington advantage down to one (101-100) at the 1:57 mark with a D-Will pull-up jumper. However, on the next possession, a John Wall missed jumper was followed by an uncontested Marcin Gortat putback layup that widened the margin. Deron missed a jumper the next time down the floor, so when Bradley Beal drained an open three to bring the score to 106-100, which proved to be too far out of reach for the Nets to come back from.
Some other observations I had from the game: Paul Pierce played by far his best game as a Net tonight, scoring 27 points off the bench on 10-for-12 shooting that looked like a statline from Pierce's All-Star days with the Celtics. Pierce was all over the floor on offense, hitting threes sometimes and driving to the hoop for strong lay-ins others……Brook Lopez, in his first game back from yet another sprained ankle, had no trouble scoring (20 points on 7-for-11 shooting) but got into early and sustained foul trouble–limiting his minutes–and couldn't rebound a lick or play much defense. After the game, he reported being a little rusty after a short absence from the floor, which could account for the limited non-offense contributions…..Reggie Evans actually saw some playing time (six minutes) even though it was relatively uneventful. The surprising thing was that Mason Plumlee, who had entrenched himself into the Brooklyn rotation, didn't play at all tonight. That's a little confusing, especially since the reason the Nets lost this game was a lack of interior defense and defensive rebounding, both qualities that Mason is proficient at.
Looking Ahead
After another disappointing loss to an inferior opponent, at home, the Nets have a day off until they head out on the road to take on the Philadelphia 76ers, the team they destroyed on Monday night at Barclays.
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