No one is happier that the Nets are moving to Brooklyn than Deron Williams.
“I don’t like this arena one bit,” Williams said after the Nets lost to the Thunder, 84-74, last night at Prudential Center. “But, it’s a good thing it’s not our arena next year.
“Even last year, it just doesn’t feel like our home arena. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t feel like it.”
Williams, a potential free agent whom the Nets hope to retain as the headliner for their new digs at Barclays Center next season, cited the sight lines inside Prudential Center, not built strictly for basketball, as part of the issue.
“It just doesn’t have good vision,” Williams said. “The depth perception’s not there.”
The numbers seem to back that up. In six games at Prudential Center this season, the Nets are 1-5 and shooting 38 percent from the floor, as opposed to 43 percent in their 10 road games.
And if you remove the 50-percent shooting night the Nets (4-12) had in Wednesday’s win over the Warriors — the one time this season the team held shootaround in the building the day of the game — that number drops to 36 percent.
“There may be something to us having shootaround in this building,” Nets coach Avery Johnson said after an afternoon Devils game kept the team from doing so yesterday. “We had the little experiment with shooting the last time here, and we scored 107 points and shot 50 percent from the field.
“We needed that night tonight.”
Williams said, “We played well last time and won when we shot here, so you’ve got to look at doing it again. We seemed to shoot a lot better that day.”
Last night, the Nets struggled to a dreadful 3-for-23 clip from 3-point range and failed to take advantage of an off shooting night for the Western Conference-leading Thunder (13-3).
Thunder stars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were generally off the mark, but Durant and Westbrook managed to get hot late in the first quarter, when they combined to score 14 of Oklahoma City’s final 17 points.
The Nets ended the first quarter down 28-18, and the Thunder’s lead hovered between 10 and 15 points for most of the final three quarters, with neither team managing to hit enough shots to either close the gap or extend the lead.
“It just wasn’t going our way,” Williams said. “This is a good team we played. They’ve lost three games all season.
“We knew it’d be a tough task, and we played them pretty well the last three quarters. Again … that first one seemed to cost us.”
After putting together his best game as a pro in Wednesday’s win, MarShon Brooks came back down to Earth last night. The rookie started the game 4-for-5 from the field, but missed his next eight shots and finished the game 6-for-17 with 14 points.
The Nets continue a brutal back-to-back-to-back set with games tonight in Newark against the Bobcats and tomorrow in Chicago.
“[Today] is a new day,” Brooks said. “The one thing I take from this game is we missed a lot of open shots.
“We’ll get some shots [today], and we will be all right.”