Two groups performed basketball at Barclays Center on Saturday. Let’s name them Team A and Team B.
Team A has the NBA’s third-largest payroll and a roster with two doubtless hall-of-fame gamers main the cost. Team B has the NBA’s second-cheapest payroll, three rotation gamers watching from the sidelines and a roster stuffed with largely younger, growing prospects.
Team A is meant to win in a sport in opposition to Team B, and it shouldn’t be a contest. In truth, Las Vegas made Team A 11-point favorites.
Yet such is the state of affairs for a Brooklyn Nets workforce that has now misplaced 4 video games in a row and dropped to a 1-5 document after their embarrassing 125-116 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Saturday, a loss punctuated by Kevin Durant — a sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Famer — slapping the scorer’s desk in frustration with 4 minutes left within the fourth quarter on the very second he, like many within the crowd, realized his workforce was not going to win.
A roster with Durant and Kyrie Irving, succesful shooters and playmakers ought to blow the lid off of most opponents, particularly opponents just like the Pacers who usually are not contending for a championship and won’t even qualify for the Play-In Tournament.
Instead, the Nets appear to be the workforce headed for an additional Play-In Tournament look, solely this time, they don’t have the laundry record of excuses to justify the poor efficiency. Only this time, the Nets have had a full coaching camp with their largely wholesome roster they usually’re persevering with to wrestle.
The first few losses have been excusable. The New Orleans Pelicans have established themselves as a darkish horse NBA Finals contender within the Western Conference. The Memphis Grizzlies put the league on discover final season, the Milwaukee Bucks are perennial contenders, and Luka Doncic could possibly be the NBA’s Most Valuable Player of the Year this season. He hung a 40-point triple-double to beat the Nets in extra time.
The Nets have been purported to beat the lowly Indiana Pacers on Saturday. It was as near an early-season must-win because it will get.
But the identical points that plagued the Nets of their first 4 losses of the season doomed them within the fifth. The protection was atrocious, the Nets obtained outrebounded by a wider margin (52-35) than they misplaced by and Ben Simmons continues to be a shell of himself offensively.
The sport plan in opposition to the Nets is evident: If you’ll be able to put a shoulder right into a participant, you’ll be able to doubtless get by way of him, and if you will get by way of him, there’s no true enforcer on the roster to guard the rim. Far too typically, a defender had to assist from the weak aspect, which made the Nets vulnerable to the nook three.
This occurred time and time once more: The Pacers hit 23 triples, tying an all-time document for many threes made in opposition to the Nets in franchise historical past.
Some of these threes have been flukes – that’s, Tyrese Haliburton, Buddy Hield and rookie Bennedict Mathurin strolling up the court docket and taking pictures over a contest. Many of them, nonetheless, weren’t.
The Nets’ protection is in a nasty place.
And so, it could seem, are each the workforce and the fan base. Some Nets followers started booing the workforce as a lowly Indiana roster ran up a double-digit lead. Other followers booed the Nets as they walked off their lovely “classic” court docket design.
The Nets have one other likelihood in a sport they’re closely favored in — as a result of Team A and Team B play once more on Halloween.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com