Given What These Nets Have Become, Maybe A Play-In Exit Would Be Least Painful

Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

Maybe it’s best if the end to this Nets season will be a quick one-and-done.

For I don’t know how much more the fan base can take. Even when Brooklyn played its best game in nearly two weeks on Thursday night, giving the energetic Cavs all they could handle for 46 minutes, the Nets still found a unique way to crumble down the stretch.

The Nets’ 116-114 loss left the sellout Barclays Center crowd shell-shocked. Their fifth consecutive defeat dropped them into seventh place, a half-game behind Miami for the sixth seed required to avoid the play-in round in the Eastern Conference. Don’t look now, but it’s quite possible for Brooklyn (39-34) to drop below Atlanta (36-37) and/or even Toronto (35-38) over the course of their remaining nine games.

Would that be so bad given what we’ve seen since the trades of superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving last month? The Nets have gone 6-12 since, with at least half of those losses noncompetitive by my count despite what the final score read.

Thursday’s defeat, Brooklyn’s second in three nights to a Cleveland club they once hoped to catch in the standings, at least wasn’t one of those. But it was just as depressing even if in a different way. Ahead by eight points after a clutch Royce O’Neale three-pointer with 2:13 remaining, the Nets proceeded to go off a checklist on how to blow a game.

On their next two possessions, they thought they could bleed the shot clock and rely on isolation plays instead of continuing with the ball movement plan that had been working so well against the NBA’s most efficient defense.

Except they have Spencer Dinwiddie, who logged all 24 minutes in the second haff after Seth Curry played like he had checked out of Brooklyn during his six-minute run in the second quarter, and Mikal Bridges, not KD and Kyrie.

Two live ball turnovers later and it was a two-point game with 45.9 seconds left. Dinwiddie then drove earlier in the clock to beat former Net Jarrett Allen to the rim, but Cleveland star Donovan Mitchell countered by drilling a tough step back with 24 seconds remaining.

At that point, the Nets had to expect Cleveland to trap and then foul—twice, since they had one to give. Head Coach Jacque Vaughn could have used his final timeout to ensure he had enough ballhandlers and consistent free throw shooters on the court, but he held it. Of course, Nets wing Dorian Finney-Smith threw the ball away and Mitchell was fouled by Dinwiddie with 11.6 seconds remaining.

What happened next is almost too painful to describe. After Mitchell knocked down the first free throw, Vaughn actually subbed the smaller and vertically challenged Joe Harris IN to replace Finney-Smith. That left center Nic Claxton on one side of the lane to box out Allen and the combination of O’Neale and Harris on Cleveland’s jumpy 6-foot 11 sophomore Evan Mobley on the other. Vaughn could have inserted another big man like Day’Ron Sharpe so the third Net in the lane could have focused on the shooting Mitchell instead of being needed to pinch on Mobley. With that timeout still in his pocket, Vaughn could have burned it at any point to get his better free throw shooters on the court—again, the Nets still weren’t in the bonus on the Cavs’ next foul.

Well, Mitchell jumped into the fray a tad early after seeing that his second attempt was coming up short and, after a tough board battle underneath where at one point three Nets had their hands on the ball simultaneously, the ball would eventually swing to Cavs wing Isaac Okoro in the left corner. Okoro’s three-pointer was pure, and the Nets couldn’t muster a good look with their remaining 0.7 seconds.

This is what bad teams do. Who really wants to see more of this? Sure, it’s possible they could finish as high as fifth in the East due to a less stressful upcoming schedule following Saturday’s showdown in Miami. But what good would a top-six seed do? Whether they faced the Cavs, Sixers, or Celtics in the first round, they’d be looking at a high probability of a second consecutive ignominious four-game sweep. At least the play-in round would be over in relatively short order.

I get that the Nets as an organization isn’t tanking, for several reasons. This isn’t all that young of a team. Of the ten players Vaughn used in the rotation, only the two centers—Claxton and Sharpe—are under 26. Cam Thomas is the only other player on their 15-man NBA roster on a rookie contract that goes beyond this season. Most of the others are players who could be legitimate pieces on a contending team alongside a star bucket-getter. And, of course, even if Brooklyn fell into the Draft lottery and won the first overall pick, it would be swapped to Houston as part of the 2021 James Harden trade.

Still, Nets fans have come a long way down the rabbit hole since the beginning of the season, when the team might not have been a top favorite to capture its first NBA title, but at least it was in the conversation until Durant’s injury on January 8.

Now, to root for the Nets to prolong their season is to prolong the pain. My favorite football team has an acronym that has been ubiquitous for more than a decade—Just End The Season.

That’s how I feel about these Nets. Get this season over with, as soon as possible. I’m fine with waiting to see what they can do this summer to restore some semblance of competitiveness into the program.