AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — For the fifth straight game, the Nets found themselves in a close game in the fourth quarter. For the fifth straight game, the Nets didn’t have enough in the tank to get a win.
The Pistons pulled away late — thanks to several Nets turnovers — for a 98-93 victory in front of a half-full crowd at The Palace.
And for the fifth straight game, the Nets suffered a loss — four of them against teams with losing records — and begin the toughest stretch of their season with no momentum and a tenuous hold on one of the final playoff spots in the Eastern Conference.
“We needed to stop the bleeding yesterday,” Nets coach Lionel Hollins said before the game, referring to the Nets losing at home to Philadelphia Friday. “As it goes out, you’d like to get a win. You don’t want to get to where you have 10 in a row or something like that. Our spirit is still up, I think we’re still fighting and hopefully we can do what’s necessary to win.”
The Nets (16-21) were unable to do so thanks to three turnovers in quick succession that helped the Pistons (13-24) go on a 12-2 run late in the fourth quarter. That allowed Detroit to blow the game open and win their eighth in nine since stunningly deciding to waive Josh Smith and eat the final two years and nearly $30 million remaining on his deal.
And it left the Nets reeling as they head into a stretch leading into the All-Star break in which 13 of their next 16 games are against playoff teams.
“We’re in a bad rut, there’s no secret about it,” said Joe Johnson, who led the Nets with 17 points. “We’ve got to try to find a way to get out of it.”
“We’ve got a tough stretch of games coming up, beginning with Houston on Monday and it doesn’t get any easier. There’s no quit on our side. … We just have to come out and play.”
As they have so often during their recent struggles, the Nets couldn’t get going offensively, going 9-for-30 from 3-point range. They’re shooting 24.5 percent (27-for-110) from deep during their losing streak, and committed 10 of their 14 turnovers in the second half.
They also had their usual struggles with opposing speed and quickness, as Detroit finished the game with a 21-6 advantage in fastbreak points, including three quick layups off turnovers in the fourth to put the game away.
“Every game the turnovers are hurting us, and the missed shots are hurting us,” Hollins said. “We had shots that would’ve put us ahead or further ahead, and we couldn’t make them. Then, to compound it, we would get into crucial stretches where we’d commit a turnover here and a turnover there.”
Those turnovers add up. Just a little more than a week after getting back to .500 for the first time in six weeks, they look as if their season could be on the brink.
Hollins tried to shake things up by replacing Sergey Karasev in the starting lineup with Bojan Bogdanovic, who hadn’t started since Dec. 8. Bogdanovic led the Nets at halftime with 12 points, and finished with 14.
Though the bench actually gave the Nets some production in this one — Alan Anderson (13 points), Brook Lopez (11 points and 15 rebounds) and Darius Morris (10 points) helped give the Nets a 42-31 advantage in bench scoring — some of the Nets’ heavy-minute players, most notably Jarrett Jack, looked as if playing five games in seven days had caught up with them.
Jack finished with five points and eight assists on just 2-for-12 shooting in 29 minutes, and also had a bad turnover during that 12-2 run that led to an easy Pistons layup.
To his credit, though, Jack didn’t try to place any blame on his struggles because of minutes, which have gone up significantly in the wake of Deron Williams missing time with fractured rib cartilage.
“No, not at all,” Jack said. “I just had a rough night at the office shooting the basketball. That was it … nothing short of that.”
The Nets have had a lot of those lately, and unless something changes, it’s hard to see how they’ll stop anytime soon.