ATLANTA — The Nets rolled out the major elements coach Avery Johnson wanted to see last night. Effort and energy. But the only component that truly matters eluded them — a win.
Oh, there were times they really looked good. And there were times when the future shone so bright. But here’s the problem: The overall here and now — with a defense that could not come up with a stop on Atlanta’s last 12 possessions of the game, a defense that was riddled for 60 percent shooting overall and an offense that consistently made the wrong play — that here and now is pretty bleak.
“We had much better fight in us,” said Johnson, who was disgusted after the Nets’ Sunday no-show against Boston. “I know with them shooting 60 percent from the field and the amount of points we gave up, it doesn’t look good, but I thought our effort was much better tonight than it was on Sunday.”
But the result was the same. So the Hawks, without Joe Johnson and following an emotionally draining victory the previous night in Orlando, took control with a destructive 26-7 close to the first half, then sat back and held off every charge by the Nets, who ended up 116-101 losers with their fifth consecutive defeat, their eighth straight on the road.
“We ended the half poorly, and obviously, that hurt us. We were playing catch up the entire game,” said Brook Lopez (24 points, 5 rebounds).
“Not a good second quarter,” Johnson said.
As Devin Harris (18 points, 13 assists) put it about that second-quarter landslide that covered the final 5:49 of the half: “We just couldn’t score and we couldn’t stop them from scoring.”
But the “couldn’t stop them” part went on all night. Josh Smith tore the Nets apart for a season-high 34 points on 14-of-16 shooting. Jamal Crawford belted them for a season-high 26 points off the bench. Al Horford had 24 points (and 10 rebounds).
And the Nets just kept teasing. Fall behind. Come back. Fall behind more.
“We’d do something great and then we’d come back and do things that are just bad timing,” Johnson said, explaining how pre-game strategy on Crawford would work — and they’d get burned elsewhere. There was a lot of that.
“Unfortunately, we just played a better team tonight,” Johnson said.
There’s been a lot of that lately, too. And next up are the Mavs and Lakers.
The Nets were within five points, 102-97, when Anthony Morrow buried a 3-pointer with 3:24 left. But Horford tossed in two scores, sandwiching a Net misfire, and the deficit was back to nine. One of Horford’s shots was a step-back jumper. Off balance.
“The one-legged step-back, I mean, wow. Tough shots, but they made them when it counted,” Harris said.
The Nets put up 101 points, but there were holes throughout. They got a really nice effort from rookie Damion James (personal-best 10 points, six rebounds) and Jordan Farmar continued his roll with 16 bench points. But Travis Outlaw, 0-for-7 Sunday, was 1-for-4 in 17 minutes.
So there was stuff to like. But a lot to hate.
“It kind of got away from us there in the second quarter — we were playing pretty good and, big momentum swing in the second quarter,” said Johnson of the streak that saw the Nets go from six up (40-34) to 13 down (60-47 at halftime). “But we got back in it. We didn’t start the third quarter very well, but here come the Nets.”
But all they did was come back to another loss.