Big Nets rally falls short in 20T defeat
Dig a deep hole, and jump in. Then fight and claw back, only to have their hearts broken in the end.
The Nets have turned this into performance art. You know what is coming, but they still find new and excruciating ways to do it.
The Nets saw a huge rally fall just short in a 138-128 doubleovertime loss to the Pelicans before 16,572 at Barclays Center on Saturday night. It was their fifth straight loss, and their ninth in 10 games. And this one probably stung the most.
“We got ourselves in a big hole again. We owe it to our fans not to get blown out like that. Obviously we didn’t play the way that us as an organization want to play the first half, so coach didn’t even come in and yell at us. He just said, y’all figure it out, get it together,” said Allen Crabbe, who scored a team-high 28 points to help the Nets rally from being down 28. His effort went in vain. “We can’t keep playing catch up all the time … At some point we’ve got to figure it out,” Crabbe added. “We’re the ones out there playing, we’re the ones out there going through the motions against the other team. It’s just us. We’ve got to get off to better starts and not get in big holes like that.”
Dominated early by Anthony Davis (game-high 44 points) and Rajon Rondo (25 points, 12 assists, 10 rebounds), the Nets fell behind 89-61 midway through the third quarter. They stormed back to force not one, but two overtimes before running out of gas. The Nets shot just 1-of-11 in the second overtime and got outscored 14-4, falling late but left ruing the game they’d given away early.
“We just have to play harder, play better. It’s inexcusable that we get down by 30. There’s no reason for us to do that,” said Spencer Dinwiddie, who had 24 points and 10 assists, but missed all three of his shots in a second overtime. “I just missed shots honestly, a big reason why we lost. I make those shots normally against switching bigs. Normally I do. I didn’t [Saturday]. I’ve got to make those.
“We can really shoot, so anytime you can shoot you’re in a game. It’s more so about us having the maturity and the focus to not go down. … Sometimes we come out like we’re [a top team like] the Cavs, Warriors or something. We can’t do that.”
The Nets closed regulation on a 55-27 run. Coach Kenny Atkinson pulled D’Angelo Russell (21 points) in the final minute of the fourth quarter after a huge backcourt violation, but said it was about managing the guard’s minutes. he logged 31:36, his most since returning from knee surgery.
But Crabbe’s corner 3 with 12.2 seconds left forced overtime. He hit a pair of 3s to give the Nets a 122-118 edge to open the first extra session.