The Nets are a walking, talking, breathing (sometimes) version of Fenway Park.
No lead is safe.
In this season of horrors, the Nets have built double-digit leads in 16 games, only to lose 11 of those games. They set the tone on opening night, when they led Minnesota by 19 points, their largest advantage of the season, and wound up losing. That trend has continued. For example, take Sunday’s loss.
“That was upsetting,” admitted team president Rod Thorn, referring to the Nets blowing a 14-point lead against the re-made Wizards, then looking completely ineffectual against a second-half zone defense before falling 89-85. “That was a game we should have won.”
So was the game a week prior against Memphis, when the Nets blew an 18-point lead. So was Game 4 in Charlotte when the Nets were up 14 and lost. So were back-to-back games against the Wizards and Clippers, Jan. 29 and 31, when the Nets were up a dozen and 10 points, respectively.
“We’re still learning how to win games,” said Jarvis Hayes, who returned but came off the bench Sunday after sitting two games with a calf strain.
And they’re learning they stink against zones.
“They went to a zone and we quit playing,” Thorn said of Sunday’s game. “We didn’t take good shots. We didn’t penetrate. We didn’t attack the zone. Then we didn’t clean up the defensive glass and they got three offensive rebounds late that all led to something. And we couldn’t make shots.”
Let’s not overlook the defense. Yi Jianlian had 20 points and 19 rebounds, but helped turn Andray Blatche into Michael Jordan. Blatche had a career-high 36 points and tore up not just Yi but anyone the Nets put against him.
“Since Courtney (Lee) started playing well, we’ve gotten points from three guys,” Thorn said, referring to Brook Lopez, Devin Harris and Lee, who is questionable at best tomorrow against Cleveland with a sprained left ankle. “Usually, when you have three scoring big, you’re OK.”
Usually. But usually teams hold on to big leads. So with each lead that disappeared, the Nets moved dangerously closer to threatening the NBA’s worst all-time record, 9-73 by the 1972-73 Sixers. At 6-53, the Nets are on pace to tie the mark. Had they held on to even five — less than half — of the double-digit leads they’ve blown, they’d already have 11 wins.
“I sure don’t want to break it,” Thorn said of the record. “But we’ve let four games go recently at home.”
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Thorn said he had heard nothing from agents and did not plan on buyouts for any of the Net veterans.