For the Nets, playing the same team twice in a row gave them a unique opportunity to assess themselves. The lesson in Brooklyn was disturbing for a team of its aspirations: These Nets are not as good as the sum of their parts — at least not yet.
Everything that could have gone wrong did, indeed, go wrong in their worst game of the season to-date. The Nets lost, 114-96, to a young but suddenly dangerous Atlanta Hawks team that exposed the flaws Brooklyn must address if it is going to see the championship light at the end of this season’s 72-game tunnel.
“We didn’t do a good job, or we didn’t improve enough in the areas we were weak. It just seems like it’s a little thing here and a little thing there. It wasn’t necessarily one situation more than others,” Nets head coach Steve Nash said. “You make a mistake in communication, a mistake in transition, a mistake on the pick and roll, a mistake on a pindown. So, we’ve just got to stick with it. It’s early. We’re frustrated with it. But it is so early that we need to give ourselves some time to continue to work and improve our communication and get better.”
Kyrie Irving had his worst game of the early season, and maybe his worst game since signing in Brooklyn. He finished with 18 points but shot 6-of-21 to get there, including a horrid 2-for-11 from behind the arc.
Kevin Durant and Joe Harris were the only perimeter players to shoot well from the field. Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot had his second straight poor performance, following a one-of-five showing on Wednesday with an even worse one-of-seven game on Friday.
“I feel like every time he shoots the ball it’s going to go in, so him having that confidence, it’s a long season there’s going to be games where you don’t shoot the ball well,” Durant said of Luwawu-Cabarrot. “I think he was still active and we will need him going forward. It’s all about staying confident shooting the basketball and keep being aggressive and having fun out there.”
Defensively, the Nets were a mess. DeAndre Jordan has continued to struggle, recording just eight points and five rebounds in his 18 minutes of play. It is the third straight game Jordan has struggled, and his second straight against a young, fast and athletic Hawks team that has been a matchup nightmare.
Jordan is a favorite among his teammates for his personality and sense of humor, and his teammates, like veteran forward Jeff Green, have his back. But Jarrett Allen has been the better of the two big men, fueling conversations about whether Allen should start.
“I am just that voice in his ear that is telling him to play your game. I mean, he knows that the season is ups and downs and, you know, like every player that plays this game, you’re going to get frustrated at some point,” Green said of Jordan. “And as a teammate, my job is just to be there for my teammate and that’s all I was doing — was just being there for him knowing that I am living with whether he plays bad, whether he plays good, I am with him. I got his back and I am there for him. And that is just the conversations that we have and just move forward. Let’s not dwell on what’s happening right now, it’s how can I get better?”
Nash is developing as a first-year head coach, learning the ropes of rotations and the ebbs and flows of managing a game on the sidelines. He has decided against calling timeouts, opting instead to let his team play through opponent runs. That cost the Nets on Friday, as the Hawks ran up an 11-point lead in the second quarter, a deficit the Nets were never able to overcome. The run could have been stopped short had Nash called a timeout.
“I want to give them an opportunity to try to problem-solve, to try to figure things out themselves throughout the season,” he said postgame. “That doesn’t mean I won’t call timeouts. But at the same time, I want to give them an opportunity to feel that, to feel the other team going on a run and to solve some of those problems themselves. That was more the thinking. It’s game six and it’s the second quarter and we’re not shooting the ball well, so I wanted to give them a little bit of time to try to find it and, more than anything, to feel that and experience that together so they can continue to build their resolve and understanding.”
There’s also the unfortunate reality of this shortened regular season with little to no real practice time between games, following a shortened training camp where teams couldn’t even practice as a whole until passing a week’s worth of COVID-19 testing and individual workouts. Nets players tried to make up for some of that lost time by working out and scrimmaging together in California during the offseason, but it’s clear this is a team still getting used to playing with one another, and now re-learning itself in a world without Spencer Dinwiddie in the rotation.
“It’s not an excuse. We didn’t shoot the ball well, but we didn’t do a lot of other things well,” Nash said of the lack of practice time. “It is early, and we need more time to drill in the concepts, but [on] both sides of the ball we need a lot of cleaning up. While we’re frustrated, we’ve got to stick with it.”
The Nets also learned another cold truth: Their stars aren’t going to shine bright every night. One game after Irving and Durant heroics secured Wednesday’s win against the Hawks, the superheroes turned up powerless.
“We can’t rely on us just making shots. Jeff Green said that in the locker room and I totally agree,” Durant said. “We’re going to have days where guys aren’t going to make shots, but we’ve got to hang our hat on the defensive side of the ball. Every team says that. Every basketball team in the world says that. But it’s easier said than done, but if we stay conscious of that, we’ll get better.”
The Nets had a chance in these two games against the Hawks to look themselves in the mirror, and they do not like what they see. Likely neither does their GM Sean Marks, who has not closed the door on a trade that gets the Nets closer to championship contention.
