HOUSTON – Here are my three thoughts on the Nets’ 114-95 loss to the Rockets in Houston Friday night:
1. Nets coach Jason Kidd drew a line in the sand Friday night by benching starters Shaun Livingston, Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce and Andray Blatche for the entire second half of what was a much uglier loss than the final scoreline would lead you to believe.
Kidd summed things up nicely after the game when he was asked about why he chose to bench those four players: “I had to go with the guys that were playing hard, and those were the guys, and they played for the whole second half.”
They certainly did, as Kidd only played Tyshawn Taylor, Alan Anderson, Tornike Shengelia, Mirza Teletovic, Brook Lopez, Mason Plumlee and Reggie Evans in the second half, playing Taylor and Shengelia for the entire second half and only playing Lopez for a few minutes in the third quarter before sitting him down after the center reached his minutes limit.
The question now is how the Nets will respond when they face the Grizzlies Saturday night in Memphis. The Nets desperately need guys like Johnson (2-for-10, five points) and Pierce (1-for-6, two points) to step up and play much, much better in Memphis if they want to get a victory and avoid ending the month of November with an unbelievable 4-13 record, as well as losses in 11 of their final 13 games of the month.
2. When you play the Houston Rockets, you know they are going to attack you in three ways offensively: by driving to the rim, shooting 3-pointers and getting to the free-throw line. Kidd even mentioned as much before the game.
That’s why it was stunning to see the Nets fail to stop the Rockets in any of those areas. The Rockets scored all 114 of their points from those three spots on the floor: 40 points in the paint, 57 on a season-high 19 3-pointers, and 17 from the foul line (on 20 attempts).
In a game full of things to point out and criticize the Nets for doing – or, in many cases, failing to do so – this was easily the most glaring one, as Livingston astutely pointed out postgame.
“The coaches, they gave us the game plan, and the Rockets came out and showed us what the game plan was,” he said, perfectly summing up the Nets’ pathetic effort defensively.
3. For all of the disappointments, Brook Lopez’s play was an enormous positive. Lopez, who had missed the previous seven games with a sprained left ankle, finished with 16 points and two blocked shots in 21 minutes, played his usually efficient brand of ball offensively and did a nice job of containing Dwight Howard defensively.
That Lopez played, and played so well, only made it more alarming the Nets were still steamrolled in every possible way. How bad would it have been if he didn’t take the floor? It’s hard to imagine it could have been worse, but it probably would have been.