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| Yep, that basically sums up Joe's, and the entire Nets' team's, performance yesterday afternoon on Christmas |
Just disgraceful. That sentence fragment would do a wonderful job of accurately describing how the Nets played against the Celtics on Tuesday–Christmas Day–in a nationally televised game. As per usual, Brooklyn played pretty well in the first quarter, coming out of the locker room with some great energy, and was able to begin the second with a slim, two-point advantage. Then, it all went to hell. And I mean ALL.
Generally, Boston outscored the Nets by a tally of 34-18 in the second quarter of yesterday's matinee, grabbing a 12-point halftime lead as a result. More specifically, the Nets gave up in the second quarter, allowing the veteran Celtics–not normally a good offensive rebounding team–to grab offensive boards and get second-chance buckets like there's no tomorrow. It also didn't help that the Nets didn't play any perimeter defense at all (allowing Jason Terry to hit a few huge threes), had no offensive movement in the slightest, and played with no intensity at all (outside of Gerald Wallace). The Barclays Center crowd was stunned by the shocking lack of anything positive from the Nets at all and was undoubtedly bored by the iso-heavy offense Brooklyn falls back into when it's struggling. Note: That iso offense just prolongs the scoring slumps, and doesn't improve it at all.
It was looking pretty dire at half, and the third quarter gave some promise, but eventually was won by the Celtics as well. With a pair of Paul Pierce free throws at 7:13 of the third, Boston expanded its lead to 21 (64-43), its largest of the game till that point. Then the Nets rattled off a 9-0 run to cut their deficit to 12. It looked like the jolt they needed to push through for a comeback but the threat eventually faded, capped off by a Rajon Rondo three-pointer to end the quarter and extend his team's lead to 15, when it had once been just 8 a few minutes before.
The fourth, and thankfully final, quarter was more of the same from the home team, as they managed to cut down to 13 after it had been 19, but couldn't score a single point in the final 2:57 of the game and thusly, did no more cutting into their deficit. A bunch of times when it appeared that the Nets could break through the proverbial ice and steal a massive home win devolved into a bunch of deflating Boston shots that were able to put Brooklyn away for good in the fourth quarter.
Some other observations I had from the game: MarShon Brooks only played in garbage time again, even though he wasn't injured. I give up…..The Nets, mainly D-Will and Gerald Wallace, continue to pass up open shot opportunities, many from beyond the arc, in the interest of passing out to give a teammate a potential chance at a higher percentage shot. That selfless mindset is certainly a good one for players to have but when it's coming in the way of the Nets having the ability to give themselves a chance to score, it's not good. Recently, this has been a trend with the team and it leads it to waste most of the shot clock mindlessly passing the ball with little thought in shooting/scoring. It seems absurdly obvious, but clearly this team is in a bad place and doesn't realize that they can't score without shooting. I'm going to get sick, by the way, from this team…..Deron took seven shots and Gerald took seven shots, 14 combined for two of the Nets most important guys. Not going to win like that…..Brooklyn ALMOST shot 60 percent from the free throw line yesterday. That means they didn't even hit three of every five free throw attempts, which is absolute garbage…..Brook Lopez managed to score 15 points on 5-12 shooting and grabbed eight rebounds as well. I know that's a decent statline for Brook, but if you watched the game, you would notice that he didn't even play well. Committing four turnovers, Brook continued to mitigate his height advantage over the undersized Celtics bigs by holding the ball close to his body and low, inviting the opposition to block him, strip the ball away from him, and just make it damn-near impossible for him to get a good shot off. Sure he ran into a few buckets here and there, but it wasn't a good game for him at all. He just doesn't look the same as he did before his recent foot injury…..Joe Johnson was 4-14 from the field in the game. No, I don't understand how he can be so inconsistent from day to day…..To finish off this hellish game and ridiculously pessmistic recap, here are some fun (for Boston fans) facts which helped the Nets get embarrased on ESPN: BKN FG%- 40.6…BOS FG%-49.4%. BKN AST- 14…BOS AST- 25. BKN TO- 20…BOS TO- 11.
Ok, I'm done. Have a nice day everyone.
Looking Ahead
The Nets head to the Great Midwest (Wisconsin, particularly) to face the Milwaukee Bucks, who have been a thorn in the side of the Nets forever, it seems. Probably won't be the most joyous flight.
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