Recap: Nets 96, Wizards 111 - Gee Wiz! Brooklyn Nets Fall Apart Again
Deron Williams is starting to be the new “Six Degrees of Separation” when it comes to the Brooklyn Nets. I can’t get away from this guy. I know the Nets would love to do the same. After avoiding playing Deron Williams in the “revenge” game after he got hurt again, leave it to fate for a Williams reference.
Remember a few years back when the Nets were in New Jersey and were awful (believe me people, they were worse than this) and finished 12-70? They were aligning themselves for the number one pick and supposed to scoop up John Wall? Instead they lost the lottery (in other news…water is wet), dropped to third and drafted Derrick Favors. Then they traded him away in a blockbuster trade for guess who?
Deron Williams!
Boy it sure would have nice. Maybe the franchise is built around Wall and Jarrett Jack wouldn’t be starting. Oh well. John Wall dominated in the game to the point of 22 points and 13 assists as the Washington Wizards ran by the Brooklyn Nets in the fourth quarter 111-96. It is the second straight loss for the Nets while the Wizards have now won four straight. Brooklyn is now in a free fall after winning four straight home games. They have now lost six straight home games and have won only three of ten in the month of December. Ugh!
What’s more irritating for the Nets is the fact that the Wizards probably have more injuries than Brooklyn. The Wizards played without Bradley Beal, Nene and Gary Neal. Otto Porter Jr. just came back from injury and things are so tight in Washington that they played a guy fresh out the D-League (more on him later).
Brook Lopez finished with 19 points and 13 rebounds. On the surface, these stats look good, but they are starting to look very empty at the same time. Lopez only scored six in the collapse… I mean the fourth quarter. Jarrett Jack had 15 points and 11 assists, but he also had four turnovers. This is not good when the team has 19 turnovers to 24 assists. Teams do not win a lot in the NBA with that type of assist to turnover ratio.
Thaddeus Young would probably be in All-Star conversations if the Nets weren’t so bad. Young finished with 16 points and 14 rebounds. He had a double-double by the end of the first half. This dude has shown professionalism that should get more recognition and praise. I hope others are seeing this.
Stop me if you’ve heard this story before…Nets are in the shower when the game gets tight.
If you don’t learn anything from reading Brooklyn’s Finest…learn this,
Good teams find a way to win and bad teams find a way to lose.
If you take a look at the final score you would think this is a blowout. When in actuality, the Brooklyn Nets were actually WINNING this game in the third quarter and were only down two 79-77 going into the fourth.
Here’s my three lessons…
1.) The Brooklyn Nets just don’t make any adjustments.
This lesson is just like saying the sky is blue and humans need air to breathe, but it applies here. The Washington Wizards went on a 16-2 run in the fourth quarter to go up 19 points with four minutes remaining. The Brooklyn Nets were run out the gym, being outscored 32-19. It’s not like the Wizards are that much better than the Nets. It’s like Brooklyn gets robbed, but they leave the keys in the door. The Nets committed nine turnovers to spark the run to put the game out of reach.
Brook Lopez weighed in on the collapse after the game…
“I don’t think we did a good job really of adjusting to what they were doing,” Lopez said of the fourth quarter meltdown. “It kind of fell apart from there. They got hot and kept going.”
Man! And they say simplicity is the object of genius.
Check out Lionel Hollins and his words of wisdom…
“We’re the team we are at the moment.” Hollins said of the Nets being 14 games under .500.”We’re struggling to get better. We have starts of moving forward and then we have lags where we go backwards.”
What’s disturbing here is that they are basically saying, they don’t know what to do to fix this. This is a reoccurring theme here. Remember the Indiana collapse? Same thing. Teams are eventually going to coast along for about three quarters and run away and hide in the fourth. This is not a tease folks, the Nets do not score enough and their offense is not creative enough to make changes when teams figure out ways to stop them or when Brooklyn’s jumpers stop falling.
2.) Brook Lopez’s stock is dropping
Sure, Brook Lopez had 19 points and 13 rebounds. It looks real good in the paper. The problem is that his counter-part Marcin Gortat had 25 points, seven rebounds, three assists and a block. Gortat outran Lopez up and down the floor and Lopez looked slow and out played.
The Brooklyn Nets have a major problem going forward. The opposition does not have to really stop Brook Lopez. If their center can match his production or exceed it, the Nets have to depend on other players to help out. More often than not, it doesn’t. Lopez was not the greatest defensive center in the world to start with. We can look back to his benching last year to figure that out. Only this year, there is no Mason Plumlee to plug in and provide energy and defense to opposing centers.
3.) Ladies and Gentlemen… Coming to stage in his NBA debut… Jarell Eddie!!!
Come on man! Things have gone to a new low when you allow a D-League player come in and run you out of your own gym without missing a shot. Jarell Eddie scored 12 points in the fourth quarter on the strength of four shots from behind the arc. The Washington Wizards signed this guy a few days ago and now the Nets make him look like he should be a Hall of Famer. He combined with Kris Humphries, who scored 10 points to make a real difference coming off the bench for Washington. The Nets bench got outscored 40-23. Remember, the Wizards are short handed, which makes this stat even worse.
The Miami Heat is next. My sources say there is no evidence that Dwyane Wade sent a limo for Jarrett Jack as of yet.
