NEW ORLEANS — Here are three thoughts on the Nets’ 109-104 overtime loss to the Pelicans Monday night:
1. The Nets have lost three games in March, and two of them have followed a similar script: They start missing 3-pointers, and keep chucking them until they shoot themselves into a loss.
Both of those losses came against bad teams on the road – in Boston against the Celtics and Monday night in New Orleans – and the Nets were a combined 14-for-70 in those two games from 3-point range, including going 10-for-40 (the 40 attempts were a franchise record) against the Pelicans.
This is the downside to the way the Nets have been playing since the start of the new year, and where the absence of Brook Lopez shows up. If the Nets’ jump shots aren’t falling, they don’t really have an alternate plan or a way to score inside. Nets coach Jason Kidd was right that a lot of the shots were open looks and some nights they simply don’t fall. When they don’t, the Nets don’t have a lot of other options.
2. Anthony Davis is going to be an absolute monster. He’s been destroying every team he faces, and the Nets were no different. Davis finished the game with 24 points, 14 rebounds and three blocked shots, utterly dominating the paint all night long.
The Nets did their best to get Davis in foul trouble, attacking the rim throughout the game. But Davis used his ridiculously long arms to alter many more shots than the three he actually was credited with blocking, in particular giving Andray Blatche trouble (he finished 3-for-8) and tying up Mason Plumlee and subsequently winning a crucial jump ball in overtime.
Nets fans can wonder what might’ve been had they won the 2012 draft lottery (they entered it with the sixth-best odds of emerging with the top pick) and earned the right to take Davis, but the Pelicans are soon going to have one of the best three players in the league — and will have him for years to come.
3. As much as anything, it appeared the Nets simply wore down in the second half under the stress of playing back-to-back nights after expending a ton of energy to come from behind and win in overtime Sunday night in Dallas. But it also didn’t help that the Nets were without Andrei Kirilenko, who missed the whole game, and Marcus Thornton, who exited after suffering a bruised back on a hard fall in the first half.
One of the biggest reasons the Nets have done so well over the past three months has been their ability to get contributions from up and down the roster, as well as being able to roll 10 guys out there every night.
Losing Thornton hurt in the second half, when his scoring punch off the bench could’ve been helpful when the Nets entered a terrible shooting rut.