Fragile Nets Crumbling Without Star Power
For those fans relieved that the Nets’ five-game road trip from hell is finally over after Brooklyn fell apart in the second half of Sunday’s 124-104 defeat at Denver, understand that there will be at least two more weeks of pain.
The Nets (29-24), losers of eight straight and 15 of their last 21 games, have six more games before the All-Star break, presumably all of them without injured superstar forward Kevin Durant and all but two without unvaccinated Kyrie Irving, who is not allowed to suit up for events within New York City limits. As for the third member of Brooklyn’s Big 3—James Harden, who sat out a second consecutive game with “left hamstring tightness” (or maybe trade bait?)—who knows?
Once 23-9 and in first place in the Eastern Conference, the Nets now stand in seventh, a play-in seed, and will fall even further should they drop their first game back at Barclays Center against Boston on Tuesday, which is looking likely.
This team has all but forgotten what it takes to win NBA games. They are resolved—that they will crumble once a little bit of adversity strikes, as if nothing can stop the inevitable onslaught.
What a turnaround. This was once a fairly resilient group. And it’s not like they’ve ever been whole—Irving only started playing on a part-time basis a month ago, NBA three-point champion Joe Harris has been out since November 14 with an ankle injury, centers LaMarcus Aldridge and Nic Claxton have combined to miss 43 games this season due to various ailments, and the Nets even went 3-3 without KD in the lineup prior to this slump.
You don’t think some of the Nets’ opponents have had similar issues with absences? Last Wednesday, sad-sack Sacramento, without its best player DeAaron Fox, came back from 12 points down in the second half to beat Brooklyn, 112-101, the quintessence of the Nets’ sorry current mental state.
Such a shame—it wasn’t that long ago when the Nets were winning games they had no business winning. Remember how they beat Philadelphia when COVID-19 health and safety protocols left them with a short bench consisting of rookies and replacement players?
Those nights are a distant memory. Even when they start out impressively, like on Sunday, it doesn’t take much for the vibes to spiral downward.
We all knew that the Nets’ 75 points in the first half couldn’t be sustainable, that it was ridden on the backs of a 12-for-24 efficiency from three-point land, with five of the makes coming from center Blake Griffin, who came into the contest with an ungodly 20.7% efficiency from deep. Meanwhile, Denver had a relative walk in the park, with MVP Nikola Jokic absolutely toying with the undersized and woeful Nets defense to help the Nuggets match Brooklyn’s output, plus one point.
At the start of the second half, however, Denver Head Coach Mike Malone turned the game around with one simple defensive switch—placing versatile forward Aaron Gordon on Griffin to at least make more of an effort contesting three-pointers. The Nets were toast—Griffin was held scoreless after the intermission on just two field goal attempts.
The less mobile Jokic, meanwhile, was then set free to hang out in the paint because his assignment was now erratic-shooting James Johnson, who in the previous game in Utah almost single-handedly put Brooklyn behind the eight ball in the opening few minutes with his ineptitude trying to do too much with the rock in his hands. Sure enough, Johnson bricked three of four shots and committed two turnovers in the first six minutes of the third quarter and Denver’s lead quickly ballooned.
Nets Head Coach Steve Nash didn’t quite see it that way, because Johnson’s third-quarter run on the court extended past 10 minutes, by which point the Nuggets were comfortably ahead, 101-84. Brooklyn had a mini-run against a dreadful Denver bench, but the hero ball from Irving, Cam Thomas and Patty Mills had a short shelf life that expired when the deficit reached 10 points.
In the end, the Nets somehow managed to only score 29 points in the second half, a 46-point drop from their first-half production. That might be some sort of record. Once the game started getting out of hand, the Nets offered no resistance, which is what I found to be most disappointing.
I wish there was an easy fix to this problem. Nash certainly doesn’t have any answers, talking after every game like he’s biding time. Trading Harden, if that is still on the table (ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and The Athletic’s Shams Charania have different takes on the matter, with Woj defusing any bombs on Sunday while reporting from the Nets’ end) before Thursday’s deadline might help at the margins in an area of weakness or two but is unlikely to bring back a replication of the three-level shot creator who can pick up the slack for Irving at home games like Harden at least attempted to do for half a season. And Irving hasn’t indicated that he’s getting vaccinated any time soon, telling the postgame media that he’s hopeful all will end well, as if the situation is out of his hands.
This was a team built on offensive star power. Still, they found ways of getting the job done without some of them earlier in the season. But either the rest of the league caught up or, more likely, the Nets have regressed in both the physical and mental areas of their games.
Because of that, I see the Nets’ struggle continuing for the foreseeable future, with the only hope coming when/if KD and Co. return to health after the All-Star break to give Brooklyn a push out of the play-in round. Until then, folks, have your chill pills at the ready.