WESTWARD WOE
Nets clipped at buzzer fall to 0-3 on road trip
LOS ANGELES — Three games, three losses. And the Nets’ season-long seven-game road trip is already starting to look like the nightmare coach Kenny Atkinson long feared it could be.
The Nets blew a huge lead, then made a stirring comeback in the final minute before falling 119-116 to the Clippers on Lou Williams’ last-second dagger.
Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov was seated near courtside in the Staples Center crowd of 17,247, only the second road game he has ever come to. And he probably didn’t enjoy what he saw, his team suffering a gut-wrenching defeat.
Prokhorov saw his team flush a 19-point cushion, then fight back from a 10-point hole in the final minute to pull even. But that’s when Williams (25 points) drilled a huge 3-pointer at the buzzer to break their hearts.
“We’ve got to stop the bleeding. We’ve got to look back at the game and see where we could stop the bleeding when we had the opportunities to do that. We let them score too much before we stopped the bleeding,” said D’Angelo Russell, who had a game-high 32 points.
DeMarre Carroll added 22 off the bench, but the Nets (36-36) still lost. Yes, it was better than recent losses in Oklahoma City and Utah. But fighting for their playoff lives, the Nets need real victories, not moral ones.
“I don’t believe in moral victories, so to me this is a tough loss. We’ve got to learn from it,” Carroll said. “To lose it on that hurt a little bit. But we have to try to stay positive keep our head up.
“Biggest thing we can take from this is we can’t give up big leads. We were up [19] first half, and gave up the big lead. Teams are going to make runs, but we have to take that same aggressive mentality we had at the end of the game throughout the whole game ... I’ll say [we took] a ministep, because I don’t believe in moral victories.”
The Nets need real wins, with Detroit, Orlando and Miami all winning Sunday. The loss dropped them 1 ½ games behind the Pistons for sixth in the East. They’re just 1 ½ games ahead of the Heat, and just 2 ½ clear of the Magic.
It was a seesaw game of runs, and huge momentum swings. The Nets were leading just 23-20 after a Williams fadeaway, but mounted 23-7 run. Carroll had 10 points in the run, his basket making it 46-27 and sending the Clippers into a timeout with 8:07 left in the half.
Whatever Doc Rivers told his players was heard. The Nets were outscored 33-9 the rest of the half. Danilo Gallinari and Montrezl Harrell (20 points each) led the comeback, with Brooklyn going into the break down by five.
The Nets trailed by as much as nine after a Landry Shamet 3pointer before climbing back into the game, Russell’s hook shot putting them ahead 82-77.
But they couldn’t make it last, allowing an extended 28-9 run that spanned the third and fourth quarters. They shot just 3-of-14 with five turnovers, imploding offensively. They trailed 105-91 after Harrell’s back-to-back buckets.
It was still 116-106 with a minute left after Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s 3, and 116-108 before Russell hit a 3 with 44.9 seconds left.
The Nets forced a five-second violation, and Carroll converted a three-point play just 10 seconds later to get them within a deuce.
After Patrick Beverley missed a 3, Jarrett Allen got free inside for a dunk to tie the score with five seconds to go. But Williams untied it to make sure there was no overtime.
“That’s the biggest piece about this. It’s not the comeback, it’s not — credit to Lou Williams — it’s not the shot. It’s the fact we had the lead and let it go,” Spencer Dinwiddie said. “Instead of putting or foot on their neck, they’re down 19, they should be down 25, then down 30 and hopefully down 40.”