If you’re looking for a reason why the Nets came up on the short end of last night’s 90-82 loss to the Bulls in Game 2 of their first-round series, you don’t have to look any further than the points in the paint.
After the Nets scored 56 points in the paint in Saturday’s easy win, going 26-for-35 (74.3 percent) in the restricted area, they finished with only 30 points in the paint last night, including going 14-for-30 (46.7 percent).
“We just didn’t attack as much in the paint,” said Reggie Evans, who finished with four points and eight rebounds in 22 minutes. “We started settling for jumpers and stuff like that, and we paid for it … a lot of it was just us settling for shots instead of feeding into the post more.”
In the six games the Nets and Bulls have played this season, the Nets have scored more than 50 points in the paint in their two wins over the Bulls and scored less than 40 points in the paint in all four of their losses.
The Nets also failed to keep Brook Lopez involved after he again got off to a hot start. After Lopez went 6-for-9 and scored 14 points in the first half, he went just 1-for-5 in the second, and finished with 21 points.
“I think they just tightened their defense up a little bit,” Lopez said. “But … we had shots and they didn’t go in. It’s not that we didn’t have any confidence [last night], but it’s going to be a matter of keeping our confidence in our shots, and keep taking our shots that we normally take.”
* After sitting out of Saturday’s win in Game 1, second-year shooting guard MarShon Brooks got his first taste of playoff basketball in the fourth quarter. Brooks missed one shot in his short stint on the floor before being replaced by Deron Williams.
* After giving away light-up wristbands and black T-shirts to commemorate their first playoff game as part of their “Blackout in Brooklyn” campaign Saturday night, the Nets gave away black rally towels with the same slogan on them last night.