Here are three thoughts on the Nets’ 116-111 overtime loss to the Bobcats in Charlotte on Wednesday night:
1. As the Nets have come up short in back-to-back overtime losses, the absences of a pair of key reserves – Marcus Thornton and Andrei Kirilenko – has been felt at both ends of the floor.
Thornton and Kirilenko, in many ways, bring opposite attributes to the table. In his short time with the Nets, Thornton has proven to be a scoring machine, capable of putting up 10 or more points in a row, and already has pulled out several games for them thanks to such bursts. Kirilenko is still a very effective defender, capable of doing a lot of the little things the rest of the Nets players don’t.
Their absences were felt in the loss to New Orleans on Monday, when Kirilenko missed the whole game and Thornton missed the second half, and then again when both sat out the entire game Wednesday. The Nets only had three guys – Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Mirza Teletovic – knocking down shots in this one, and could’ve used Thornton’s scoring off the bench. And on a night where the Nets were struggling defensively, as well as with rebounding, they certainly could have used Kirilenko’s versatility.
Both players seem likely to be back for Friday’s game against Cleveland in Brooklyn, and the Nets will be happy to have them.
2. The Nets employed a strange strategy in the closing moments of regulation. After Williams tied the game with a long jumper with 26.8 seconds left in regulation, the Nets had a 2.8-second difference between the game and shot clocks to work with.
That should have allowed them, if they could prevent the Bobcats from scoring and grab the rebound, to call a timeout and set up a final shot to potentially win the game. Or, if Charlotte scored, they would have a chance to tie it up at the buzzer. But the Nets rather oddly allowed the Bobcats to run the clock down to about six on the shot clock and then, when Kemba Walker began to drive to the rim, Williams clearly used the team’s foul to give purposely.
That meant, the shot clock reset and the Bobcats could hold for a final shot. After the game, when asked about the play, Nets coach Jason Kidd simply said it was a chance for his defense to step up, and it did, but didn’t address why he made the decision to foul there. The game wound up going to overtime when Walker lost the ball going up for the potential game-winning shot, but it was an odd sequence of events.
3. On a completely unrelated note, Nelly showed up at Wednesday’s game for some reason, sitting in the courtside seat right at midcourt next to a ridiculously large bouncer. Beyond that it was funny to see the St. Louis rapper taking in a random Nets-Bobcats game in Charlotte, there’s also the fact that Nelly famously referenced Jason Kidd in a lyric (“I’m kiddin’ like Jason”) in his hit song, “Hot in Herre.”