Nothing has come easy for the Nets this season.
They started out with one of the NBA’s hardest schedules, playing 14 of their first 22 games on the road through the end of January, many of those coming as the second halves of back-to-backs.
They also dealt with several debilitating injuries, including losing their only post presence, Brook Lopez, to a broken foot days before the season began.
But amid all of their struggles, point guard Deron Williams can see signs of improvement.
“We’re still making progress,” Williams said after the Nets lost to the Knicks, 99-92, at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night. “We’re a young team and we make mistakes here and there and the schedule’s caught up with us a bit at times, but we’re improving. We’re winning a lot more ballgames, we’re in a lot more ballgames.
“We’ve just got to keep on trucking, keep on getting better.”
When they take on the Bulls tonight at Prudential Center, Williams and the Nets (8-17) will hope to have more luck containing Derrick Rose than they did stopping Knicks backup point guard Jeremy Lin, who scored 25 points and dished out seven assists to almost single-handedly beat the Nets.
Several of those assists came on the pick-and-roll, where he repeatedly found Tyson Chandler for dunks, and he took the ball all the way to the basket and scored.
“He did a nice job of getting inside of our defense,” Nets coach Avery Johnson said. “We tried to give him different looks on our pick-and-roll coverage, and he just had a terrific game.”
The Nets will be short yet another player for tonight’s game, leaving them with just nine. Anthony Morrow will miss the game to attend the funeral of his grandmother, Lillie.
Keith Bogans, who was signed Wednesday, likely will take Morrow’s place in the starting lineup.