Nets Are Scorching

After their longest winning streak in the last four seasons, the Nets have now lost three in a row and will be without Deron Williams for the next few weeks. Yesterday’s game was one that the team should have won, after having a double-digit lead against one of the league’s worst teams in the Washington Wizards in the third quarter. But without Williams, the Nets certainly were missing something down the stretch and dropped their third in a row. Tonight they come back to New Jersey to face the Indiana Pacers, who have beaten the Nets seven straight times.

Here are some things to keep an eye on tonight:

Defense. The Nets haven’t played too much of it over the last two games. The Bucks and Wizards both shot over 50 percent and had little trouble scoring. Tonight the Pacers come into town, who have scored an average of 114.5 points per game in two wins against the Nets this season. Indiana plays a fast-paced style, and the Nets will have to try and keep them in the low 90s, especially without Deron, if they’re going to win this game.

Brook without Williams. Brook Lopez has been outstanding over the Nets last five games, shooting over 50 percent in all but one of those games and scoring more than 20 points in every one. But now he will have to adjust to playing without Deron Williams, who Brook seemed to have some instant chemistry with. In the Nets first game without D-Will, Lopez scored 21 points and had 10 boards, but I’ll be interested to see if he can keep it up over the next few weeks.

Attendance at the Rock. During the Nets last three games at the Prudential Center (against the Clippers, Celtics and Bulls) the team had three of their best crowds of the season. But tonight, on a Monday against the Pacers and without their new franchise player, I’d expect the attendance numbers to decline a bit. It was a refreshing sign last week to actually hear people at Nets home games, and it’d be nice if it could continue.

Just when you think the Nets can’t come up with a more disappointing way to lose, they blindside you with some astonishing act of inferiority. Sunday’s attraction was a lead-blowing loss to the lowly Washington Wizards (those Wizards who were missing Andray Blatche, Rashard Lewis, Josh Howard, and Nick Young) to the tune of a 98-92 score in the matinee.

The result itself wasn’t really the most troubling aspect of the game. Sure, the Wizards are bad, but all bets are off for the Nets when Deron Williams is out of the lineup like he was Sunday. The thing that irked me was that they blew a 17-point second-quarter lead by playing pathetic basketball in the second half.

Surprisingly, this game was not short on excellent individual performances by Nets players. Kris Humphries had 18 points, 17 rebounds, and 3 blocks. Brook Lopez had 21 points and 10 boards. Jordan Farmar had 10 points and 17 assists (a career high). Anthony Morrow had 19 points. Even Johan Petro had 8 points (now that’s a feat).

By the way, after this game, the Nets have now had three players (Farmar, Williams, Devin Harris) rack up at fewest one game with more than 17 assists this season. According to Basketball Reference, this is the first time that has happened to a team since 1986, when it started logging stats for its game finder.

It just goes to show that, in order to win, some team cohesiveness is more valuable than individual superiority. As a matter of fact, it also takes not playing like a high-school team in the second half. The Nets shot just 43 percent for the game, though that figure cleared 50 percent in the first half. No one this side of Morrow could buy a three. And the Nets certainly had no interest in holding onto the ball — they had 20 turnovers in the contest as a consequence of that “stingy” Wizards defense.

It was really a sight to see how bad the Nets’ offense was after the intermission, as they mustered only 36 points in the second half, and a mere 12 of those came in the third quarter. I often talk about some of the Nets’ units as offensive black holes. In the second half of the game, there was no telling a black hole from real space. There were few offensive sets, and even fewer that actually worked, as the plan stalled into: run around for 22 seconds and fire up a jumper. Lopez didn’t get nearly enough touches, while Humphries and Petro took more 17-footers than a New England marina.

Not to be outdone, the defense was also hilariously subpar. JaVale McGee shot 8-of-9 from the field. JaVale McGee. 8-of-9. From the field. The Nets made him look like Kareem out there. Jordan Crawford did his best Jamal Crawford impression by firing up 17 shots, but he still stung the Nets for 21 points. And Mo Evans looked more like Tyreke Evans.

But the Wizards performance that really hurt the most was John Wall’s. He could’ve been a Net. He should’ve been a Net. Instead, they got Farmar. Wall wasted no time in making the Nets regret that they got screwed by chance, as he torched them for 26 points on 11-of-22 shooting, to go along with 8 assists and 6 rebounds.

But what really took the cake was a pair of dagger jumpers he hit in the final minute to put the Nets out of their laughable misery. They were clinging to whatever hope they had left, and Wall buried two fadeaway midrange jumpers that, honestly, looked like shots a star would make. But who really doubted that Wall would get there at some point?

At this point, the playoffs can really be written out of the conversation. And after this game, even if the Nets did make the postseason, they wouldn’t deserve the seed. When Yi is happy to beat your team, that’s when you know you have a problem. Here’s to next season.

Two interesting pieces of news came out of Nets camp today.

Firstly, Nets beat writers have reported that the Nets will be shutting down Deron Williams for three games, and will re-evaluate after Wednesday’s game against Cleveland. It seems like there’s a good chance that Deron will be shut down for the remainder of the season, but there’s no guarantee yet.

Likely on a related note, Stefan Bondy reports that fan favorite Sundiata Gaines signed a multi-year deal with the Nets, one that extends into next season. Gaines is averaging five points and three assists per game in his short stint with New Jersey and has played impressive defense as well.

The playoffs, which were a very distant possibility in the first place, look impossible now, but that’s fine with me. It makes more sense to rest Deron and have him at 100% later than to risk further injury on a near-impossible prayer.

On Sunday, the Nets take on the Wizards in the nation’s capital in a matinee game at 1 PM eastern. Coming off Friday’s loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, in what was a pathetic defensive performance, the Nets look to bounce back as the season begins to wind down:

Coping Without Deron Williams: Deron Williams might not be shut down for the season just yet, as the team continues to weigh options with regard to its dealings with his ailing wrist, but he’s unlikely to play Sunday against the Wizards. As a result, the Nets are going to have difficulty defensively with John Wall. Expect that Sundiata Gaines will earn increased minutes over Jordan Farmar, both because of his inspiring play recently and also because of his athleticism, which bodes well in dealing with Wall’s explosiveness.

Brook Lopez’s Improvement: The Wizards’ frontcourt is fairly pathetic, as Javale McGee and Andray Blatche are not much of a formidable tandem (Rashard Lewis continues to sit out with an injured knee). As a result, expect Brook Lopez to have a standout game on the offensive end, taking advantage of the youth and inexperience of McGee and Blatche. Without Williams in the lineup, offensive excellence from Lopez will be key to a Nets’ win.

After all, It’s the Wizards: There haven’t been many games this season in which the Nets have been favored. This is one of them. The Wizards are flat-out terrible, even when they play in the Verizon Center, and the Nets should come in the mindset that nothing but a win is acceptable. Sure, Wall and Nick Young provide a formidable scoring punch in the backcourt, but aside from that, there are very few redeeming qualities for Washington’s team. If the Nets can play even average basketball, they will likely come away with a win on the road.

Nope. No charge drawn by The Machine here. Just a stupid flop, like the entire Nets defensive effort. •AP Photo/Morry Gash

Box Score – Bucksetball – Brew Hoop

Any good karma the Nets gained over their five game winning streak the past two weeks seemingly vanished during their flight to Wisconsin as last night’s 110-95 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks may have been a new low for a team that was looking reenergized and taking giant steps forward just this past Monday.

It wasn’t just the Nets couldn’t defend – we’ve all certainly seen them have these kinds of 48-minute-long defensive lapses this season against teams like the Houston Rockets and the New York Knicks. But it’s the fact that this stinker of an effort came against the worst offensive team in the league – letting up 110 points to a team that scored only 56 points on Sunday night? Needless to say, this game, in all likelihood killed all talk of some kind of miracle Nets playoff run dead in its tracks, because if the Nets can’t avoid getting manhandled by a team like the Bucks when their season is on the line, then who can they really beat down the stretch in a “must-win” scenario?

Monday’s win against Boston may have been the feel-good game of the season for Nets fans, but Boston is an older team trying to save some bullets for the postseason, while the Bulls are trying to prove themselves as the new Beast of the East and the Bucks are fighting (and are closer) to that last playoff spot. These games mattered for both teams, and the Nets finished those two games 0-2. Not good.

And yes, I realized the Nets were coming off a tough back-to-back, leading by two at halftime and were as close as 4 in the the 4th quarter. Yes, Deron Williams is hurting and had a poort shooting night (4-13, 18 points), but I never got the sense that the pendulum was ever going to swing in New Jersey’s direction last night. The Bucks were able to make baskets at will and what’s even more scary is they didn’t have to work that hard to do it. They only attempted 9 free throws for the whole game (sinking 8), they had 4 points in transition and 38 in the paint. While I thought the featured match-up was going to be the two centers, Brook Lopez vs. Andrew Bogut – Bogut actually had a relatively quiet night (13 points, 7 rebounds, 4 blocks), and Brook brought his “A” offensive game going off for 25. Instead, where the real imbalance lied was with Milwaukee’s wing players – most notably John Salmons and Carlos Delfino.

In the first half, Anthony Morrow and Damion James were seemingly switching back and forth guarding Salmons and Delfino, and it hardly mattered. Delfino led all scorers with 26 points without making a single basket within 12-feet. In fact, the one shot Delfino took at the basket, he missed. Instead, 11 of his 13 FG attempts were three pointers and he sank 8 of them. And these were all-star weekend-style threes – aka, uncontested. In fact, I was waiting for the money ball to be lobbed his way in the third quarter, when the Nets went to zone and Anthony Morrow was for some reason wandering around the paint, while Delfino was open for so long in the corner, he was able to do his laundry, balance his check book, mow the lawn, set his DVR and calmly hit the trey. Trust me, I timed it.

Since the Deron Williams trade, the talk has been about who the Nets could acquire that would add real bonafide talent to this roster and while it’s easy to talk about how the team would look with Dwight Howard or David West or Zach Randolph, if Billy King is really looking to build a “team” and not just throw a bunch of players against the wall to see what sticks (see exhibit A: the New York Knicks post-Melo), I hope he finds a way to get an honest-to-goodness two-way player to man at least one of the wings next season. When you go back to the Nets glory years in 2002 and 2003, they had Kerry Kittles, a guy who could knock down a three, run the fast break and play some defense, at SG, and Richard Jefferson, who could also run the fast break, aggressively get his way to the basket and defend like an animal, at SF. Anthony Morrow is an excellent shooter, but misses his marks defensively more than Charlie Sheen on the set of Two and a Half Men, and Damion James, despite being advertised as a polished player, is very raw offensively and is still prone to rookie mistakes defensively.

When Avery Johnson  goes deeper on his bench, his options don’t get much better, as the bloom is starting to come off the Sasha Vujacic rose after another poor shooting night (3-9), Travis Outlaw plays more like a zero-way player for stretches, and Jordan Farmar is quickly escalating as public enemy No. 1 from my vantage because the offense appears to stall whenever he checks into the game unless he happens to hit one or two of the 20 threes he seemingly chucks every game. In a perfect world next season, Morrow is relegated to the Vujacic role off the bench as he’ll actually be able to hit on about 45 percent of the jumpers he takes, James is an energy guy who can be brought in for defensive reasons in crunch time situations, and Jordan Farmar’s reasonable but totally expendable contract is elsewhere, giving the Nets more financial resources to wheel and deal. In a world where God doesn’t hate the Nets, Travis Outlaw gives a press conference and says he’s deferring the remaining $28 million on his contract due to his poor performance in 2010-11. Hey, I’m just trying to ride the fantasy here.

In the meantime, the Bucks have now won eight straight against the Nets, and they are, without the doubt the official Kryptonite for NJ. I still haven’t figured out why that’s the case, but I’m glad the season series officially ended on Friday, because otherwise, I would still be clawing my eyes out watching the Bucks get separation after separation on nearly every 15-foot jump shot they attempt.

Al Iannazzone is reporting that after Deron Williams injured his right wrist (again) in last night’s 110-95 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, Avery Johnson and the Nets are discussing possibly shutting DWill down or at the very least, limiting his minutes down the stretch:

“I don’t think we can continue every game at this rate,” Johnson said. “Maybe sometimes it feels good. It significantly affects his shooting, or he injures it and we have to take him out, so we’ll have a discussion about it. We’ll talk about it.”

Well, the loss to the Bucks probably officially torpedoed the Nets floundering playoff chances, but it would still be a terrible shame to see Williams sit. My guess is he’s going to try and tough it out, but Avery will probably limit his minutes as the next few weeks march on.

The Nets (22-44) follow-up their physical match-up with the Bulls in Newark last night with a road trip to Wisconsin to take on the Milwaukee Bucks (26-41). Here are some keys to tonight’s game:

Leapfrog Time: If the Nets are seriously about to go on some kind of miracle run to close the season and sneak into the playoffs, this is a game they simply can’t lose. The Bucks stand 3.5 games up on the Nets in the Eastern Conference and despite winning 7 straight games against New Jersey, they’ve been mostly middling this season. With a number of high quality teams still left on the Nets’ schedule, they can’t afford to slip against another under .500 team tonight, if the talk about Playoffs is to be taken seriously.

Overcoming Another Good Defense: The Bulls have the best defense in the league, but it doesn’t get much easer for the Nets tonight. The Bucks, despite having one of the worst offenses in the league, are 4th in Defensive Efficiency and 3rd in points allowed. They’re also 6th in opponent field goal percentage. The Nets (especially Jordan Farmar) were struggling trying to score from the perimeter last night and while I’d like to say to them just take better shots, the truth is the Nets are going to have to shoot much, much better than 35 percent to get a W tonight. If they do, Milwaukee is obviously easy to outscore which is how games are actually won unless the rules have been changed on me.

Can the Brookie Monster Maintain?: Brook Lopez’s March has been nothing short of spectacular, averaging 25.2 points on 56 percent shooting (we’ll ignore the rebounds, but even that’s up to 7.7. a game). But Brook is going against an old-nemesis, Andrew Bogut. Brook is averaging 15.5 points in his two other match-ups against Milwaukee, third lowest for Lopez against any team this season. Last year, Brook only averaged 9 points per game against the Bucks. Bogut has been consistently good against the Nets, so Lopez needs to outplay him tonight.

Our old friend Sebastian Pruiti has provided some of his expert play breakdowns over at his NBA Playbook site. This morning, he looks at the game clinching three from Kyle Korver that was caused in large part by a blown defensive assignment from Deron Williams.