Nets blow double-digit lead late in ugly loss to Clippers
LOS ANGELES — As implosions go, this one was nuclear.
The Nets turned a double-digit lead over the Clippers with just over five minutes left into a 125-114 defeat, a sad on-court capitulation before a sellout crowd of 19,370 at Crypto.com Arena that included team owner Joe Tsai.
The e-commerce billionaire saw his team allow the final 22 points in a collapse that wasn’t just horrible, but historic. If his mood had been dampened over the past month or two, Sunday sure won’t help.
“Lessons to be learned,” Cam Thomas said. “That first half and the third quarter, that’s how we want to play. And in the fourth quarter, we can look at it like this is not how we want to play, because they just turned up on us. It was like 41-15. It was crazy. It was a crazy run. But it’s always gut-wrenching when you give up a lead like that in just one quarter.”
The Nets had never trailed, and led 114-103 after a Mikal Bridges layup off a Thomas feed with 5:33 to play. Little could they know they wouldn’t score again, with nine straight misses, two turnovers and one embarrassing defeat. Over the past 10 years, only one other team had finished a game on a run of 22-0 or longer, according to Elias Sports Bureau (the Timberwolves blitzing Houston on March 26, 2021).
Until Sunday’s implosion.
“Yeah. Just stings. Just got to be better. Definitely not fun,” Bridges said.
“It was 22-0?” Nic Claxton asked incredulously. “They started switching and we couldn’t get no points, and they just played with more energy than us in the fourth quarter and things weren’t flowing. … Switching has been somewhat of a kryptonite for us. It’s definitely hurt us this far in the season. It just forced us to play slow and [hunt] mismatches instead of keeping that flow we had going offensively.”
Switching tends to lure teams into searching for matchup advantages — called Elephant Hunting in the NBA. But Sunday it was the Nets’ Elephant Hunting that got them killed, going away from the pace that saw them score the first 16 points of the game and lead by as many as 18 in the fourth quarter.
“They were playing harder. They adjusted. They went small. They [were] redding everything. Kept everything in front,” Bridges said. “Yeah, they went small, redded everything. Then we were stuck didn’t know what to do with … how to break it.”
That’s a damning indictment halfway through the season, especially considering the Nets switched all last season, used to red the season before that and have frequently gone small for years.
“It was about how we was getting the shots. We kind of strayed away from that and we started trying to hunt matchups going oneon-one instead of just letting the game flow. Letting it come to you,” Dennis Smith Jr. said “We went away from that and that’s when it got tough.”
James Harden finished with 24, and Kawhi Leonard 21 for the Clippers.
Bridges had a game-high 26, but just six in the second half. Thomas added 20 off the bench, but it wasn’t enough.
Teams playing on four days’ rest this season had been just 1-7, per Elias Sports Bureau. Make it 2-7 now.
Brooklyn built several 18point leads: on a Thomas and-one, then on his stepback, and finally on a Claxton tip dunk that made it 99-81 with 25 seconds left in the third.
It was still 104-86 when they coughed up a 31-10 blitz, giving it all away in the fourth.
Leonard went to the line to slice the lead to 114-110 with 4:14 left. After a Johnson airball, Norman Powell’s left-corner 3 pulled the Clippers within one.
Brooklyn had surrendered 8-2 runs over the final minute-and-a-half of overtime against Miami and regulation against Portland to lose both.
A Thomas travel handed Leonard a midrange jumper, and the Clippers their first lead at 115-114. Leonard’s free throws put the Nets in a three-point hole with 2:27 left in regulation. They never got out.