The Nets finally played a game that matters, a Friday restart against an Orlando team they had to beat. It couldn’t possibly have gone any worse.
Right out of the gate the Nets faced the team a half-game behind them in the standings. And Brooklyn didn’t just lose — it got dominated and outright outclassed, blitzed 128-118 by the Magic at Disney.
“It’s definitely disappointing we put in all of this work, put in all these hours and then we come out like that,” Jarrett Allen said. “It’s deflating. But we have to come out and play our game. We’re very capable of responding as a team.”
In their first game in 143 days, it seemed they would allow 143 points. Jacque Vaughn’s Nets (30-35) fell to eighth in the East. Minus eight players, they looked so shorthanded and sieve-like, it begs the question of whether they have enough to avoid a play-in — or beat ninth-seeded Washington if they can’t.
“I don’t think we made adjustments quick enough. We didn’t get enough stops,” Caris LeVert said. “They scored way too many points. … We scored our fair share, but we have to stop people if we’re even going to have a chance out here.”
The Nets didn’t stop anybody on Friday. They allowed 59.1 percent shooting through the first three quarters, and were down 128-100 with 6:59 left in the fourth before making a cosmetic 18-0 run to close the game and make it look respectable.
It wasn’t.
“For us to win games, we’ve got to defend while we’re out there. Offensively, we shared the ball, did what we were supposed to do, but we’ve got to guard if we’re going to win games,” Garrett Temple said. “We understand it’s going to be an uphill battle, but we have pieces… We’ve got guys that can defend: It’s more of a mindset.”
The Nets hit seven of their first nine to build a quick 16-8 cushion, and led 39-36 after a first quarter that saw them shoot 69.6 percent. But the wheels fell off after that.
“They went into a blitz defense and I’d say that changed up how we were running our offense, so that threw everyone off,” Allen admitted. He did finish with 14 points and five rebounds, but after putting up 10 points and four boards in a 5-for-5 first quarter, he mustered just four points and one rebound the rest of the way.
The Nets hit just 33.3 percent of their shots in the second quarter, going into the break trailing 70-59. It just got worse, shooting 36.4 percent in a 41-23 third.
The Nets fell behind 107-77 with 2:32 left in the third on a Michael Carter-Williams foul shot. They closed with those 18 unanswered points, led by Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot (team-high 24 points off the bench).
LeVert added 17 points and seven assists. But after he and Allen ate Orlando up early on the pick-and-roll, the Magic adjusted and blitzed the ball out of LeVert’s hands, and the Nets right out of their early offensive flow.
“I talked to the team about, we have to embrace that a little, the fact we’re going to have to be extremely gritty and determined to put a body on somebody every single possession,” Vaughn said.
LeVert made the right plays giving up the ball, but the Nets were just 13 of 42 from 3. Meanwhile, Evan Fournier had 24 for Orlando, while Nikola Vucevic added 22, seven rebounds and five assists.
“A lot of it was just the compete level, execution. … We let bad shots that we had or the missed shots we had offensively affect what we were doing on the defensive end,” Joe Harris said. “We definitely need to do a better job of gang rebounding, everybody coming back to the ball.We’re obviously limited in terms of size, but that shouldn’t prevent us from getting defensive rebounds.”