Nets Are Scorching

Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

Box Score – KnickerBlogger – Posting and Toasting

The Nets played a great offensive game, led by as many as 16 but in the end could not score enough to beat the Knicks in a high-paced, fun game to watch at Madison Square Garden. Deron Williams seemed to show no signs of the wrist injury and he did everything except make the game-tying shot in the final seconds. While the Nets played well enough to win, like countless other games this season, they fell a few points short at the end.

Everything about this team is different with Deron Williams in the lineup. It was evident from the opening tip and it was the primary reason why the Nets scored a season-high 36 points in the first quarter. Sure, Brook Lopez was great, with 16 points on 6-7 shooting in the first, but it was all predicated off of D-Will’s creativity with the ball. He gets everyone open shots and had 5 assists in the opening stanza. The Nets had been awful in first quarters as of late, but on the heels of 58.3 percent shooting from the field, they had a 6-point lead after the first 12 minutes.

As a Nets fan and someone who can’t stand everything about the Knicks right now, I was hoping there would be a few moments last night where the Nets play would force the Knicks fans to turn into boo birds. Well we heard exactly that early in the second quarter after the Nets extended their lead to 10 on a sweet D-Will floater and nice put back from Johan Petro. Following that the Nets continued their run and after Sasha Vujacic buried a three and Farmar had a fast break and-1, they were all of a sudden up by 16.

I’ve seen a decent amount of the Knicks over the last few weeks but haven’t watched an entire game like I did last night. Let me just say this: All of their critics are 100% correct, they play no defense whatsoever and their rebounding is even worse than their defensive effort. With Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony there is no denying that New York can score, but the Nets got whatever they wanted on offense and it was just a matter of knocking shots down. And like I mentioned the Knicks defensive rebounding is so poor it’s pathetic. The Nets got countless tip-ins that weren’t even contested. If I were a Knicks fan I’d be disgusted watching this team with their lack of defensive execution every night.

The first half was a thing of beauty for the Nets. Brook led the way with 22, D-Will controlled the pace and the Nets’ Anthony (Morrow, of course) was 5-6 from the field and scored 14 points. For a team that has struggled scoring lately it was a little bit of a surprise to see the Nets score a season-high 68 POINTS in the first half, but it’s all relative when you’re playing the Knicks defense. Either way give the Nets credit because even though they got a ton of open shots and easy looks, they still needed to knock them down, which they did in the first 24 minutes. The Nets defense wasn’t great either as the Knicks scored 58 points of their own, but I was satisfied with a 10-point lead for the visitors at halftime at MSG.

As good as the Nets first half was, the Knicks were able to chop 6 points off the Nets 16 points lead in the final few minutes of the second quarter, and they continued that run early in the second half. If it wasn’t for an Anthony Morrow three the game would be tied at 68 but even still, just 2:31 into the third quarter the Knicks had cut the lead to three and it suddenly seemed like the game was sliding in their favor. In the first few possessions of the third period, the Nets clearly tried to feature Brook Lopez. While that is a fine strategy by Avery Johnson because of the first half he had, I would still rather have the offense run through Williams and use he and Brook in the pick-and-roll. 

One of the biggest sequences in the game occurred about halfway through the third quarter when the Nets buried three 3-pointers on successive possessions to build the lead back up to 10. D-Will started and ended the barrage with two from near the top of the key and Morrow had the other one in between from the right wing. His shooting was outstanding all night as he finished with an impressive 30 points on 10-15 shooting. Morrow is another guy whose game is dramatically lifted with Williams in the lineup. It’s not that complicated: D-Will penetrates and causes the defense to collapse and shooters like Morrow can get more clean looks from the perimeter. That’s a clear recipe for winning basketball.

With about 4 minutes left in the third the Nets two main offensive threats, Williams and Lopez, each went out with four fouls. After two Anthony Morrow free throws pushed the lead up to 8, the next three and a half minutes became critical to make sure the Nets could maintain their lead with D-Will and Brook on the bench. But not surprisingly with the Nets two best players on the bench, Carmelo went off and continued his outstanding third quarter play. Travis Outlaw made an effort to defend him and say what you want about ‘Melo, but when he’s on a roll scoring the ball, no one in this league can stop him. He finished with 20 points in the quarter, the Nets offense looked stagnant and they held just a 92-91 lead at the end of three periods.

The first few minutes of the fourth quarter saw the game go back and forth with each team trading one-point leads. And then the dynamic duo that is Shelden Williams and Anthony Carter took over. Yes you read that right. Williams got a leak out transition layup and two half-court buckets to give the Knicks a five point lead with 6:20 to go. Lopez played a very solid game but his defensive softness was something I did not like to see. I realize he was in foul trouble in the fourth quarter but he has to be more physical with a guy that has the talent of Shelden Williams.

But after some big buckets from D-Will, the Nets fought back to tie the game at 107 and like many NBA games, this one came down to making the winning plays in the final four minutes. After some great plays by Williams and three free throws by Chauncey Billups, the game was tied at 114 with 2 minutes to go. But the Nets decided to only take jump shots, Travis Outlaw had a big traveling violation in transition and Anthony promptly buried a mid-range jumper to give the Knicks a two-point lead. 

The Nets ran a nice set out of the timeout to get Brook a shot off a pick-and-roll but after he missed the shot and lost his shoe, he felt it would be more important to put his shoe back on than to play out the possession with the ball still being tipped around. So what happened? The ball got batted right towards him but since his head was down, it went off his back and went out of bounds. You literally see it all when you’re a Nets fan.

But even with all of that after Carmelo missed a wide open mid-range jumper the Nets had a chance to tie or win the game with 8 seconds left. Deron got a great look from about 16 feet but he couldn’t knock it down and the Nets lost 120-116 in what was an exciting game. In terms of the stars, Anthony, Stoudemire and Billups combined for an impressive 93 points and although the Nets got very strong games out of D-Will, Lopez and Morrow, 116 points ended up not being enough to get it done.

There were some good signs in this game to give Nets fans promise for next season but they need to start putting together more offensive and defensive efforts in the same game. So the team is on yet another four-game losing streak and will head down the Jersey Turnpike to Philly on Friday.

Olympic Sprinter Luis Scola racing ahead of the defense again.

Box Score – Red94 – The Dream Shake

When I was growing up, like most kids, I played town sports. Little League baseball, town basketball, even soccer. I played all three for much of my youth, and when you play low-level sports, there’s one constant: at least once, you’re going to get your ass kicked. At some point, you’ll run into some team that’s bigger, faster, stronger, and generally better than you, and you’ll get beat like 41-2. It happens. However, where I grew up baseball & soccer had these little tweaks to make things slightly less embarrassing: the mercy rule.

Everyone knows the mercy rule. If you were up by 12 or more runs, or 6 or more goals, they’d call the game. No need to embarrass the opponent any more, right? They’ve gotten their loss, you’ve gotten your win. Move on, there are bigger things to worry about. Basketball lacked this rule, unfortunately – the clock dictated that every second of every quarter had to be played. There were rules for this sort of thing, and the rule states you play until the final buzzer sounds. This made the “fans” in the crowd, like my parents, tune out of the riots and start doing other things. This especially stunk if my team was losing – not only is my team down 56-3 but I can’t even attract the attention of my parents.

On a related note, the Nets played last night.

Not a lot of people were at the Rock to watch this game. But why would they be? The Nets are missing their star player and boast two starters who played as backups on a championship team a year ago. The Rockets aren’t flashy or interesting, although they’re well constructed and play tough defense. They don’t have any pull, though. There’s no big Nets-Rockets rivalry. The Rockets don’t have any flashy stars. No one cares that Courtney Lee is in town. It’s the definition of a meaningless NBA regular season game.

Meaningless or not, it still stung to watch. Before it got ugly, the Nets were actually ahead at one point. It was 19-17 in the middle of the first quarter, and the Nets looked like a real team. Anthony Morrow was hitting shots, Kris Humphries was snaring boards, Brook Lopez… well, Brook wasn’t playing well, he’d get there in the second quarter. But, naturally, any idea that the Nets would hang around with an even semi-interested team was a folly. After a 14-0 Rockets run and a couple more buckets, the Nets were in a 13-point hole at the end of the first. Kyle Lowry had 14 points, including three threes, and three assists in that quarter. Without a Lopez block on a fast break, it would have been 16.

Once the first quarter ended, I might as well have turned off the television set. I knew what was going to happen. The Nets were going to make a couple of shots here and there, maybe even get the lead under ten points (they never did). But this was an undermanned team, facing a 13-point deficit with 36 minutes remaining against a team that was at least at semi-full strength. I could not fathom a single outcome in which the star-struck Nets would win this game. Bad teams playing better teams don’t come back from deficits, even with deficits occurring so early in the game. It was the definition of hopeless. It was mercy-rule basketball.

Sure, the Nets gave it a good run. They started running through Brook Lopez every play on offense, finding good results. The guy had 18 efficient points in the first half, and even though Chuck Hayes was giving him some trouble Lopez found advantages down low and basically just shot over him. But Lopez made eight field goals in that first half, and the rest of the Nets combined to make just 11.

(The Nets also attempted just 5 free throws in the first half. All by Brook. He made just two.)

Sure, Jordan Farmar knocked down a few threes. Sure, Brandan Wright didn’t look awful again. But there’s nothing to take from this game other than “wow, without Deron Williams, the Nets don’t stand a chance.”The laundry list of things they did wrong could fill a webspace. Leaving guys like Jordan Hill under the basket for open dunks. Not running back in transition. Terrible, terrible, terrible perimeter defense. Making silly turnovers. Missing midrange jumpers that they shouldn’t be taking anyway. Seriously, I wonder if anyone ever taught Brook that a 7-footer can get an 18-footer at any point in the shot clock. Considering how rarely he passes them up, the likely answer is “no.” There are minute things to parse – Johan Petro took a bunch of bad shots again, Travis Outlaw had another mistake-full game, Kris Humphries & Anthony Morrow struggled to produce, and Ben Uzoh looked good – but it’s the same old story, just packaged with a different team on the label.

Truthfully, by the end of this game I was my parents – tuning out as I watched my favorite team crash & burn, reminding myself there are more important things in life to feel better. The Nets were down 21, and the Heat-Cavaliers were in the middle of a brawl that was easily the story of the night. As an analyst, I felt like a cheater, as a fan, I felt justified.

Man, I hope Deron’s available tonight.

Is it wrong for me to question Brook Lopez's effort when he only attempts 8 FGs against the best Center in the game? •AP Photo/Reinhold Matay

Box Score – Magic Basketball – Orlando Pinstriped Post

The play from last night that best sums up the current predicament the Nets are facing in the closing weeks of the 2010-11 season came with just a shade over two minutes left in the game. Despite an 11-0 run by the Orlando Magic earlier in the fourth, through the handy-work of Kris Humphries, Anthony Morrow and Sasha Vujacic, the Nets found themselves within six points when they started to employ the Hack-a-Howard strategy, putting Dwight Howard on the line while they still could without giving a possession back to the Magic. The strategy initially worked. Dwight Howard went one out of two and the Nets answered with a two pointer by Jordan Farmar to cut the lead to four. Howard was fouled again, and missed another free throw. But rather then continue to chip away, that’s when the game slipped away.

The offensive rebound off a missed free throw is one of the harder plays to pull off in basketball, especially in late game situations when the defensive team is focusing even mores on securing a potential board. Everything was set up right for the Nets – the Magic’s worst FT shooter was on the line and rebounding-machine Kris Humphries – he who’s grabbing more than 32 percent of all potential defensive boards while he’s on the court – was in the lower blocks waiting to pounce. But Hump mistimed his jump for the ball, it slipped loose and into the hands of Ryan Anderson, the former Net who is 31st at his position in rebound rating. The ball found its way to Chris Duhon in the corner, who was only playing because of an injury to Jameer Nelson, and Duhon, probably one of the worst NBA rotation players in the league, drilled the three – making it a four-point swing and eight-point lead for Orlando with about two minutes to go. The game was iced.

What made this play stand out to me, besides how monumentally back-breaking it was, was the fact that despite how mathematically improbable that outcome was – Hump being outboarded by a rebound-averse big, and the dagger being delivered by a player who has a PER on the level of Stephen Graham this season – the play still occurred because the Nets failed to execute when they needed to most. When this team plays without Deron Williams against one of the league’s elite team like Orlando, the gap in talent is just so vast, that common sense and statistical probability just go out the window. If there’s an opportunity for the Nets to botch a play during these games, expect the team to seize on that opportunity – otherwise this team would probably have 10-15 more wins this season. It’s what separates good from bad, talent from talent-lacking. The Nets, in their current state, are just a collection of players who can individually go off for good games, but as a group are not very good. They have a career back-up in Farmar playing 40+ minutes, and career bench sparkplugs Vujacic and Morrow playing 36 minutes each. Their best bench option is Travis Outlaw (at least last night) and though that might have made sense two years ago, it doesn’t anymore. They have a back-up center who’s more than 7-feet-tall and has attempted 74 percent – 74 PERCENT – of his field goals from outside of 10-feet this season. This current collection of players just looks terrible folks, and bad things happen to bad teams.

And that’s not even considering Brook Lopez’s game. I partly joked in the pregame thread yesterday that last night’s game was going to spur the Lopez vs Howard debate, especially with Howard’s impending free agency in 2012. Lopez has had himself an excellent March offensively, scoring 22.3 points per game and even reaching double digits in rebounding three times (which is pathetic for a seven-footer, but a boon for Brook). But he last hit 20 points on Monday night against the Pacers, taking him 20 shots to do it while getting absolutely torched by his inexplicable nemesis Roy Hibbert, and after grabbing 10 rebounds against the Wizards on Sunday, he grabbed nine collectively on Monday and Wednesday – PG numbers. That brings us to last night’s game against Howard which was an utter embarrassment: 10 points, while only attempting 8 field goals and two rebounds. Maybe I’m being unnecessarily hard on him, but it seems like since the team’s post DWill meltdown against the Wizards, Lopez is hanging it up for the remainder of the season. It’s as if a lightbulb has switched off and Lopez decided after being initially inspired by the Williams acquisition, with DWill now on the sidelines in a suit, he’s not interested in being the “man” for the last few weeks of the season, and he’d rather hang out with Ryan Anderson afterwards and compare their Disney princess figurine collections. Though Anderson, at the very least, can grab a rebound when his team desperately needs it.

Yup. That about sums it up. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

Box Score – Cavs: The Blog – Fear The Sword

Yes, I get that the Nets won.

I get that the Nets knocked down huge free throws down the stretch, and kept the Cavaliers from getting within one possession with the ball late in the game. I get that Kris Humphries had a career-high 23 rebounds (9 offensive), and Brook Lopez had a huge game-high +16. I get that Farmar grabbed four steals and that the Nets got passable games from Sasha Vujacic and even Travis Outlaw.

But two starters down or not, there’s no way in hell you can feel satisfied with a team you watch regularly putting forth an effort like the Nets did last night.

This was one of those classic games that both teams deserved to lose. Unforced loose balls & bad passes everywhere. Not a shred of boxing out. No defensive rotations. Countless missed open shots. Guys settling for long-range twos and bad shots at the rim. Guys tripping over their own feet and falling constantly. Sundiata Gaines injuring himself running back on defense. It was awful. It wasn’t basketball. I felt like I’d been transported back to tenth grade, to watch my high school’s JV team botch offensive play after defensive assignment.

My only mistake watching this game was originally seeing it only through the lens of New Jersey, thinking that only the Nets were royally screwing up. After turning on the game with a few unbiased friends, though, I quickly dismissed that idea – these guys were railing on both teams pretty consistently. It was a room full of Celtics fans, and they just couldn’t fathom the sheer ridiculousness of what they were watching. That’s when it clicked in my head: hey, both of these teams are awful.

I thought it was over. With 2:43 remaining, after Anthony Parker buried a three to tie this ugly game at 78, I thought the Nets were cooked. I couldn’t explain it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the Nets were just finished. The Ramon Sessions floater in the lane – uncontested, mind you – to make it 80-78 and the missed wide open 20-footer at the top by Anthony Morrow soon afterwards exacerbated this feeling. Nobody had shot well this entire game, and suddenly the Cavs had turned it on. The Nets, I thought, were just too inconsistent in crunch time to rely on, even with a team that’s 13-56.

Luckily, I was wrong. Anthony Morrow & Jordan Farmar came up huge at the charity stripe down the stretch, and the Cavs clearly wanted the loss more. But would you have been surprised if I was right?

I’m sorry. Brook Lopez, I get that Kris Humphries is big and strong and mean and goes after boards like you do comic books & Sara Bareilles concerts. But the dude got sixteen boards – sixteen! – before you grabbed your first rebound. You had zero rebounds in the first half. You took five more minutes in the third quarter to grab your first. It’s not like your Jason Collins-ing it either, clearing out the lane for Hump to come down with it. You’re just…floating there. Tipping the ball around. Not hustling. Not being aggressive. When the Nets drafted you and you started killing it every game, I was psyched. I thought the Nets had a cornerstone for a decade. With 7-21 shooting nights with only five rebounds in 33 foul-plagued minutes, you’re proving me wrong. Please don’t.

But truthfully, this game was a lesson in “how to win a game as inefficiently as possible.” The Nets shot 34 percent (31.6 from deep, against the worst perimeter defense in NBA history), allowed 18 offensive rebounds (58 total), turned the ball over 13 times, and couldn’t crack 100 in overtime against the worst team in the NBA, and still didn’t lose. Because, truthfully, perhaps unbelievably, the Cavs are a worse team.

I don’t have “more thoughts after the jump” on this one because frankly I just want to get the taste out of my mouth. Yes, it was a win. Yes, I’ll take it. But if this is how the new-look Nets are going to play without their superstar, there aren’t going to be many more wins down the pipe.

AP Photo/Bill Kostroun

Box Score – Eight Points, Nine Seconds – Indy Cornrows

The Nets had a 12-point lead in the first half, held the Pacers to 40 points in the first half but couldn’t hold on and lost by four to Indiana. There were major stretches in this game when the Nets played well and Sundiata Gaines continues to be a positive for this team, but despite an inspired late performance to cut the lead to two, they could not complete the comeback.

The Nets got off to a solid start by getting Brook Lopez some open looks, which he was able to drain. But after hitting his first three shots, he missed his last four and was under 50 percent in the opening quarter. Before the game, I said that keeping the Pacers’ field goal percentage down was a key and at least early on, the Nets did that. Indiana shot a miserable 33.3 percent in the first quarter, but the Nets were only at a 39.1 percent clip and had a 19-15 lead after a sloppy first period.

Let me touch on Brandan Wright for a moment here. He is clearly a guy that came out of UNC too early and has failed to show he can consistently produce in the NBA. But as “The Bird” Ian Eagle said during last night’s broadcast, he will get his opportunity over the Nets final games of the season. As a big man who’s 6’10 and can run the floor, he should be able to find a home in this league. But his problem has been strength and he still has the same wiry frame he had in college. Last night he did show some aggressiveness with some post-up jumpers and an attempt at a thunderous dunk in transition, but he finished with just 2 points and 4 boards in 8 minutes.

The bench got the second quarter off to a great start with a 12-4 run in the first four minutes to push the Nets lead out to 12, and it was all keyed by Gaines. He got a well deserved contract the other day and he continues to make shots and give the Nets second unit a spark. He hit two mid-range jumpers, made three free throws after being fouled while attempting a trey and finished with a career-high 18 points on the night. What was most notable about Gaines performance is that he was playing during crunch time, and not Jordan Farmar. Interesting, but the correct decision by Avery Johnson in this game.

The Nets only had a lead at halftime largely because the Pacers offense was flat-out awful in the first half (until the last 2:44 of the second quarter, when they scored 10 points to cut the Nets lead to four) . They turned it over 9 times, but upped their shooting percentage to 40.5 percent and scored 38 points in the game’s first 24 minutes. While they missed some makable shots (especially Danny Granger who was just 1-9) the Nets defense needs to be given some credit, especially considering the ease with which the Wizards and Bucks executed in the team’s previous two games.

There’s no need to continue repeating what we always say about Kris Humphries, but the rebounding machine had 10 boards in the first half and finished with 14 in the game. While he only scored 9 points, if he can continue to make the mid-range jumper, he will be even more of a force on the offensive end.

It was clear when the second half started that one team was still in the playoffs and fighting to keep their number-8 spot, and the other was 24 games under .500. The Pacers looked inspired as they went on a quick 9-0 run to build a 5-point lead, and got plenty of easy looks during their run. After that the game settled down over the next few minutes and saw one of the wildest sequences you will ever see in an NBA game. Tyler Hansbrough saved the ball towards half court, Stephen Graham took it right at Roy Hibbert’s chest and got denied and the Nets finally picked up the loose ball ending with a Humphries dunk. The entire building seemed to feed off of that and clearly liked the Nets effort. But after the dunk cut the Pacers lead to 55-53, Indiana went on an extended 14-8 run to end the third quarter with an 8-point lead.

One of the main issues the Nets had last night was the lack of a consistent scorer. I was concerned that Brook Lopez’s production would decrease without Deron Williams in the lineup and it did to some extent against the Pacers. The Nets center did have 20 points but on 9-20 shooting and did not seem like he was in the flow of the offense after the first few minutes. Although the Nets had seven guys that scored at least 7 points in a balanced attack, they lacked a go-to-guy and only scored in the mid-90s because of some late three-pointers.

While the Nets defense was strong in the first half, the Pacers scored 60 second-half points and ended up shooting nearly 50 percent in the game. But it was encouraging down the stretch to not see them quit and make a valiant effort at a comeback. After trailing by 11 with 2:24 remaining, the Nets cut the Pacers lead to 3 on a Sundiata Gaines (who was injured and on the floor for some time after the foul) free throw with 40 second remaining. Sasha Vujacic was a key contributor to that run as he made 3 three-pointers (one of which was definitely a two) and really kept the Nets in the game.

But despite the valiant effort from “The Machine” and the Nets, they came up on the short end of a 102-98 loss. That makes seven in a row to the Pacers (correction from the pregame thread) and the team now heads to the road for three straight, starting with the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday.

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.

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.