Here are my three thoughts on the Nets’ 113-83 loss to the Knicks in Brooklyn Thursday night:
1. One line was repeated over and over after Thursday’s loss by Nets coach Jason Kidd and his players: The Nets had decided to try to keep the Knicks out of the paint, and a team that lives and dies by the 3-pointer lived by it Thursday night.
Well, the second part of that is certainly true, as the Knicks went a staggering 16-for-27 (59 percent) from behind the 3-point arc while blowing out the Nets. But having the first part — keeping the Knicks out of the paint — as your defensive strategy doesn’t really make much sense.
The Knicks, especially without Tyson Chandler, don’t have any kind of low-post presence. Andrea Bargnani is a jump shooter, Amar’e Stoudemire has lost most of his athleticism and Kenyon Martin is essentially a non-factor offensively. With Brook Lopez back healthy and able to protect the rim, the combination of Lopez and Kevin Garnett should’ve been enough to prevent any of them from really getting going.
Instead, the Nets allowed a team that always takes a ton of 3-pointers — the Knicks are tied for third in the NBA with 25.4 3-point attempts per game, even if they hadn’t been making a ton — to get a whole bunch of wide-open looks from downtown. If you allow any decent NBA 3-point shooter to get a wide-open look, chances are they are going to go down.
Going back and watching the film, the Knicks got 17 wide-open 3-pointers and made 14 of them, meaning they went 2-for-10 when the Nets at least had some kind of a contest on them. Many of those wide-open 3-pointers came with just one extra swing pass around the perimeter, freeing up shooters to have what seemed like hours to set up and fire, which added up to the Nets getting routed on their home floor.
2. Once again, the Nets were competitive in the first half of a game, getting to within seven at halftime even after the Knicks made some crazy shots in the first quarter to jump out to an early lead. But, once again, the Nets came out after halftime and had their doors blown off. They took a punch and failed to respond for what seems like the millionth time.
Alan Anderson referenced the win over Memphis on Saturday as the one time the Nets absorbed a big run from an opponent and responded with one of their own, and he’s right. Far too often, the Nets have seen their opponent — usually in the third quarter — jump on them and have simply folded up shop. That was supposed to be different about this year’s Nets team, which was considered to be a mentally fragile group last season. By importing Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Jason Terry — plus hiring Kidd — the Nets were supposed to gain all of the mental toughness those players have displayed throughout their careers.
Instead, the Nets look like paper tigers at this point, with no tangible signs of that changing anytime soon.
3. One odd thing was both Kevin Garnett and Kidd referencing how the Nets have changed a lot of things since assistant coach Lawrence Frank was re-assigned. Assuming Frank was re-assigned Tuesday, when the Nets announced the move, the team then just watched film on Wednesday and had a shootaround Thursday morning. That doesn’t seem like very much time to change the system, which might explain why the Nets have been beaten by over 20 points in each of their past two games, a franchise first in back-to-back home games.
The Nets are now easily the worst defensive team in the league, allowing 108.6 points per 100 possessions while allowing opposing teams to shoot over 44 percent from 3-point range, which would shatter the previous record of a little over 41 percent by the Cavaliers in 2010-11.
They might claim injuries as the reason they’re struggling — Kidd referred multiple times to needing to “be whole” to see where things stand — but the bottom line is the Nets can’t stop anyone right now. And, until that changes, they’ll be hard-pressed to get any wins.