Here are my three thoughts on the Nets’ 107-86 loss to the Magic in Orlando on Sunday night:
1. When the Nets went out and put together their roster this summer, there is no doubt they improved. However, there was one thing that they didn’t upgrade: their athleticism on the perimeter. That was brought into the spotlight Sunday night by the play of Magic rookie guard Victor Oladipo.
In 21 minutes off the bench, Oladipo had the biggest impact on the game of any player. He finished with 19 points on 8-of-13 shooting to go along with six rebounds, four assists and two steals, and had the highlight of the night when he threw down a massive 360-degree dunk on a solo fastbreak after stealing the ball from Deron Williams just over halfcourt early in the fourth quarter to put an exclamation point on the win.
Though the Nets forced Oladipo into seven turnovers, he still had little trouble getting to the rim (where he went 5-for-5), and that allowed him to start to get his jumper working, as Nets coach Jason Kidd pointed out after the game.
Deron Williams said the biggest problem Oladipo posed for the Nets was his ability to run the high pick-and-roll, which cracked open the Nets’ defense and led to lots of open shots all over the floor.
“It’s just that we got to do a better job of keeping the ball out of the middle, containing the ball, talking a little bit better, knowing which direction the pick is coming from,” Paul Pierce said afterwards. “It’s a combination of things. And then when you have those breakdowns, the ball gets into the middle, it breaks down our defense because now you’re asking for the bigs to step up and help and the wings to sink in and it opens up the 3-point shots. And then when the 3-point shots are falling, it opens up the drop-down on the baseline to the bigs for dunks and layups.
“It starts right there at the top.”
The Nets struggled against teams with quick guards all last season, especially against teams such as Atlanta and Milwaukee, so this will be something to keep an eye on.
2. The Nets have plenty of players who can shoot the ball. Though that clearly will be a strength of the team, it proved to be a weakness on Sunday night.
The Nets combined to take 47 of their 89 shots from at least 16 feet from the basket, including 30 long two-point jumpers (from 16 to 23 feet). While the Nets shot a decent percentage on those shots, going 14-for-30 (46.7 percent), those shots are the most inefficient on the court.
“The biggest thing tonight was too much outside shots,” Andrei Kirilenko said. “Every game there has to be a balance, inside-outside. Most teams play inside out. Well, we played outside-outside.
“We had a lot of shots, and that’s like a lottery. You either make them or not. Tonight [we had] no makes.”
They managed some makes, but clearly not enough to stay in the game with the Magic. As the shots started to go awry, the Nets basically admitted they allowed their heads to drop on defense, leading to even more problems.
Many of the misses weren’t even close, either, with several airballs and many shots looking off as soon as they left guys’ hands. This may wind up being the Nets’ worst offensive performance of the season.
3. If you want to come away with one positive from a pretty dreadful performance, look at the play of Brook Lopez, who finished with 21 points, six rebounds and five blocked shots. He has 11 blocks through the team’s first three games.
Lopez was one of several players to voice his frustration with the team’s play after the game, saying flatly, “We’re definitely better than this team, but we didn’t show it tonight.”
He’s not the type to say it, but it seems safe to assume all of the trade talk in the never-ending “Dwightmare” — more than a year’s worth of chatter that centered around the Nets sending Lopez as the centerpiece of a package to the Magic for Dwight Howard, which Orlando never found satisfactory — would be a motivating factor for Lopez when he goes against the Magic. He played that way Sunday night, and acted like it afterwards.