Thanks to having five games in seven days, it’s been over a week since the Nets have been able to get in a full practice.
Today, the Nets will get back to work in a practice setting at Barclays Center, where the team will hold a practice open to the public. And, for a team still trying to get used to playing together, a return to the practice court will be a welcome sight.
“This last week was tough,” Deron Williams said after the final game in that stretch, Friday’s 106-96 loss to the Sixers at Barclays Center. “[We’ve had] four in five nights, five in seven nights, so it’ll be good to get a break from that and get back to working on fundamentals and working on our stuff in a controlled setting.”
The last week was an up-and-down one for the Nets, something you would expect from a team almost entirely made up of players who have barely, if ever, played together. After winning their first three preseason games, the Nets struggled throughout a 115-85 loss to Boston on Thursday before playing better, but still coming up short, Friday against Philadelphia.
“We’re still learning one another,” Joe Johnson said after Friday’s game. “We’ve got a group of guys, a lot of the guys were here last year but didn’t get a chance to play with one another.
“Everybody’s still kind of trying to find their niche on this team, and that’s the main thing right now.”
Part of the issue has been the compressed preseason schedule. With five of the team’s six total preseason games behind held in a seven-day span, the Nets had to deal with a pair of issues.
Not only did that schedule not allow them to get out and practice after games to work on things that came up during them, but they also didn’t have their full complement of players involved until Friday’s game, because of MarShon Brooks dealing with right foot tendinitis and players getting nights off in order to avoid getting run down.
Now that only leaves Wednesday’s preseason finale against the Knicks at Nassau Coliseum to test things out before the Nets officially kick off their first season in Brooklyn against their intra-city rivals at Barclays Center on Nov. 1.
“We’ve only been together for three weeks,” Williams said. “You hope things gel faster than they do, but who says they won’t? Sometimes it just clicks. I think it takes watching more film and seeing yourself mess up before you get it.”