Cam Johnson, D’Angelo Russell and Ben Simmons had been all dominated out forward of the Nets’ matchup in opposition to the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday at Intuit Dome.
Even when missing important firepower prior to now, Brooklyn at the least put up a combat. It scrapped. It clawed. It routinely made anticipated slaughters watchable. Jordi Fernandez’s group continued to combat, no matter who was on the market.
However Wednesday’s 126-67 bloodbath wasn’t that. It was a humiliating expertise for Fernandez and the whole group.
The Nets (14-27) saved it aggressive early and closed the primary quarter on a 7-0 run. That spurt tied the sport at 21 coming into the second. Two-way ahead Tosan Evbuomwan got here in off the bench and did his greatest to maintain a bullish James Harden in entrance.
Then Brooklyn simply give up. It was outscored 37-14 in a second quarter that noticed the Clippers open up a 58-35 lead at halftime. Extra worrisome was the Nets’ full lack of effort popping out of the locker room. They allowed an 81-30 run, which spanned the second and third quarters, and located themselves down 102-51 coming into the ultimate body.
A annoyed Noah Clowney was ejected with 9:55 left. Brooklyn trailed by 53 at that time. And the Clippers saved pouring it on, shamelessly, securing the most important loss in Nets franchise historical past: 59 factors. The earlier franchise-high was 52 again in 1978-79. Their 67 factors had been additionally the fewest scored by an NBA staff in a sport this season, and the second lowest whole in a decade.
Brooklyn’s loss tied for the Tenth-worst in NBA historical past. It completed 5 factors shy of its lowest staff level whole in franchise historical past. This catastrophe got here one night time after the Nets, albeit a lot more healthy, scored 132 factors and beat the Portland Path Blazers by 18.
Fernandez and his staff have carried out way more with much less. There have been no excuses for Wednesday’s efficiency, tanking or not. The Nets had 36 assists and 13 turnovers Tuesday night time in Portland, with Russell and Simmons dealing with the rock. With each sidelined in opposition to the Clippers, that they had 15 assists and 22 turnovers.
However the absences of Johnson, Russell and Simmons shouldn’t equate to this. Brooklyn shot simply 30.1% from the sector. You nearly felt sorry for everybody concerned. And no participant, coach or assistant was exempt from blame.
“When you see a loss like this, a lot of things went wrong,” Fernandez mentioned. “The energy and competitive spirit was not there, plain and simple. But right now, the only thing I can do is support my guys. It’s never a good experience to go through this, but analyzing the whole season, none of our guys work for this, and they’ve competed the whole time. So, all I can do is support them, obviously own this myself as well, and show up the next day and try to be better.”
The tip of the Nets’ present six-game West Coast swing can’t come quickly sufficient. They’re 1-3 of their final 4, with losses to the Clippers, Nuggets and Jazz. They’ll end up the journey with video games in opposition to the Lakers and Thunder on Friday and Sunday.
No matter how these video games play out, it doesn’t get any worse than what Brooklyn placed on movie Wednesday night time.
