After yet one more blowout loss within the aftermath of the mega trades that despatched Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving out West — together with the second lopsided loss to the Knicks at Madison Square Garden throughout this stretch — Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn instructed workforce morale has taken successful.
“We have some competitive guys, and so they are concerned about winning. We always have made that the priority. We’re not hiding from that,” Vaughn stated after Brooklyn’s 142-118 loss to the Knicks on Wednesday. “We’re trying to win every single game, and so I ask that we give just more. What that means, whether it’s more time together, back to backs, shootarounds, recovery days, all of the above. We’re gonna have to give more to bring our group together quicker than normal.”
The Nets fell to a 34-28 document with Wednesday’s landslide to the Knicks. They now have a 2-6 document in video games that adopted the Feb. 9 NBA commerce deadline and have misplaced 4 video games in a row — with one other anticipated loss looming within the defending convention champion Boston Celtics, ready for the Nets on Friday.
More regarding than the variety of losses, nevertheless, is the character of defeat in Brooklyn.
The Nets trailed by as many as 25 of their 18-point loss to the Knicks on Feb. 13. They gave up a whopping 50-point benefit of their 44-point loss to the Chicago Bulls within the first sport out of the All-Star break. They got here again from down 18 to lose on a Trae Young buzzer-beater in Atlanta, then acquired flat-out steamrolled by Giannis Antetokounmpo, who posterized each succesful defender to erase an 18-point Brooklyn’s lead and beat the Nets by 14.
And then, in a sport that meant extra to Mikal Bridges as a result of he performed at Villanova with two Knicks gamers — Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart — the Nets gave up 142 factors, the second-most they’ve given up because the Sacramento Kings hung 153 factors on them in November.
“To give up 142 points to your cross-town [rival] that hurts, and it should hurt,” Vaughn stated. “I asked them at halftime too, if it did hurt as a group, the care factor rising to a different level.”
The Nets profile as an above common defensive workforce, however there’s a clear drop off from the names on paper to the product on the ground.
That’s as a result of for all of the size, athleticism and defensive prowess the Nets gained within the trades that despatched Durant and Irving out West, they haven’t been in a position to generate sufficient stops.
The proof is within the pudding: The Nets have given up 30 or extra factors in 1 / 4 in 12 of the 16 quarters they’ve performed since popping out of the All-Star break. The Nets additionally allowed the Knicks to attain 47 and 34 factors within the opening two quarters of Wednesday’s blowout loss at Madison Square Garden. They have been blown out in 4 of their final six video games.
There’s much more knowledge suggesting the Nets are worse defensively than meets the attention: Brooklyn entered Wednesday night time giving up 122 factors per 100 possessions, good for the NBA’s third-worst defensive ranking behind solely the Portland Trail Blazers and Houston Rockets, who personal the NBA’s worst document.
“We tried some different things schematically tonight to get a look at it, and there were some positives and some negatives about it,” Vaughn stated. “We simply haven’t had time to observe that. We’ll use some alternatives going ahead to observe totally different schemes, as a result of we’ll want it going ahead.
“I’m learning the strengths and weaknesses of this group, not where their previous stops were. It’s a culmination of this group together and what it presents, so I am learning that, and my job is to convince them to buy into us doing it together.”
Compounding issues for a Nets workforce struggling to string collectively stops is the strain to retain playoff standing — together with a powerful remaining schedule.
The Nets have fallen behind the Knicks to the Eastern Conference’s sixth seed. If they fall anyplace from seventh to tenth, they must play in a sudden-death Play-In Tournament to earn their playoff seeding.
That’s provided that the Nets don’t fall to eleventh, and so they manner they’ve acquitted themselves out of the All-Star break, an prolonged dropping streak is on the desk.
“We’ve really gotta take a step defensively,” Vaughn stated. “We were all concerned about us scoring and putting up points, and I think we have enough firepower to do that, but we have to take our defensive mindset to a different level. We have to be extremely confident in guarding the guy in front of you, take pride in doing that, because that’s the first part of our defense.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com