Deals leave Nets with losing hand & no way to bluff
After yet another blowout loss in the aftermath of the mega trades that sent Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving out West — including the second lopsided loss to the Knicks at Madison Square Garden during this stretch — Nets coach Jacque Vaughn suggested team morale has taken a hit.
“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 said after Wednesday’s 142-118 loss. “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 record with the landslide. They now have a 2-6 record in games that followed the Feb. 9 trade deadline and have lost four games in a row — with another expected loss looming against the Celtics tonight.
More concerning than the number of losses, however, is the nature of defeat.
The Nets trailed by as many as 25 in their 18-point loss to the Knicks on Feb. 13. They gave up a whopping 50-point advantage in their 44-point loss to the Bulls in the first game out of the AllStar break. They came back from down 18 to lose on a Trae Young buzzer-beater in Atlanta, then got flat-out steamrolled by Giannis Antetokounmpo, who posterized every capable defender to erase an 18-point Nets lead in a 14-point Bucks victory.
And then, in a game that meant more to Mikal Bridges because he played at Villanova with two Knicks players — Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart — the Nets gave up 142 points, the second-most they’ve given up since the Kings hung 153 points on them in November.
“To give up 142 points to your cross-town (rival), that hurts, and it should hurt,” Vaughn said. “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 average defensive team, but there is a clear drop off from the names on paper to the product on the floor.
That’s because, for all the length, athleticism and defensive prowess the Nets gained in the trades, they haven’t been able to generate enough stops.
The Nets have given up 30 or more points in a quarter in 12 of the 16 quarters they’ve played since coming out of the All-Star break. The Nets also allowed the Knicks to score 47 and 34 points in the opening two quarters of Wednesday’s blowout loss. They have been blown out in four of their last six games.
“We tried some different things schematically tonight to get a look at it, and there were some positives and some negatives about it,” Vaughn said Wednesday. “We just haven’t had time to practice that. We’ll use some opportunities going forward to practice different schemes, because we’ll need it going forward.
“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.”