Giannis drops 41 in Bucks’ rout of Nets

“We’re going through a lot of growing pains this year,” DeMarre Carroll said of the Nets’ woes early in games. “A lot of things are hitting us this year that we weren’t a good enough ball club last year to understand: That’s one of them. You can’t come in somebody else’s house and feel your way into a game,”

“You’ve got to throw the first punch, they’re going to throw their punch back and you’ve got to try to finish. We’ve got to grow and understand that one-through-15. We’ve got to grow and come out and be more aggressive.”

Carroll and D’Angelo Russell both scored a team-high 14 points. But the Nets shot just 37.1 percent from the floor, and 8-of-34 from deep. All those long Milwaukee arms led to long misses. And those led to Bucks’ fast breaks.

“You cannot just put your head down and drive it at the first opportunity. We did not move it side to side and we didn’t drive it enough,” Atkinson said.

“A lot of it was missing shots. They got out in transition and got easy buckets. Obviously that’s deflating,” Spencer Dinwiddie said. “Part of it is switching. We need to do a better job moving the ball in general.”

The Nets opened the game shooting 1-of-9, and missing their first six 3s to fall behind 16-2. The Nets did outscore the Bucks 37-23 in the third. Russell scored 10 points in a 14-8 run to end the period to get them within 81-72 going into the fourth. But that’s when they got outscored 35-19 in the final period, trailing by as many as 28.