The Nets came out flat in Wednesday’s loss to Philadelphia, flat enough that Avery Johnson got himself tossed in a futile effort to fire them up. The coach said the team didn’t give any effort and if he could make it have a 5 a.m. shootaround before hosting Indiana at noon on Super Bowl Sunday, he would.
Now the Nets will have to try to bounce back tonight against Detroit, and do it on the road, where they’re 3-23 this season.
“Our team is a team that normally plays hard and plays with a lot of passion. . . . We didn’t have any at that point,” said Johnson, and it likely didn’t look any better when he made his players watch tape of the game yesterday. “It didn’t look pretty on film.”
Now they’ll try to get a rare road win without backup point guard Jordan Farmar, who has already missed the last four games with a strained lower back. An MRI yesterday was negative and he’s listed as day-to-day, but he didn’t travel to Detroit and Johnson already ruled him out of Sunday vs. Indiana.
“His back hasn’t progressed at the rate we wanted it to,” the coach said.
That could mean more minutes for Ben Uzoh and D-League All-Star Orien Greene, but also for Devin Harris, who has been on an assist binge of late. He has 34 in his last two games, and has averaged 12.2 over his last six, with Johnson increasingly trusting him to call plays.
“He’ll call a play and then I’ll call a play. And then depending on the time in the game, he’ll just let my play [go],” said Harris. “Most of the time, when I’ve got guys in I can run plays for, I get a good feel of who’s got the hot hand and how we want to attack. . . . He pretty much lets me have it.”
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Anthony Morrow and his Twitter followers are on a campaign to get the deadeye into the 3-point shootout at All-Star Weekend. After watching last year’s event sitting next to Jay-Z, he’s hoping his .456 career percentage will be enough to get him in this time.
“If I get in, I think I’m going to win it,” Morrow said.
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Derrick Favors, 19, has taken being picked for the Rookie Challenge in stride, the same way he seems to take everything.
Johnson said he expects Favors to get five or six dunks, and the forward answered: “If that’s what he wants from me, I’m going to give it to him.”