Here are my three thoughts on the Nets’ 111-95 loss to the Pistons in Detroit Friday night:
1. The Nets have been fond of saying that they’ve left 2013 behind them during their hot streak over the past several weeks.
They proved Friday night, however, that they are fooling themselves a bit by saying so. This is still an inconsistent team, one that had a chance to position itself with a run at finishing over .500 before the All-Star break, something Paul Pierce declared as a goal for this group following Monday’s win over the 76ers in Brooklyn. Instead, the Nets got their doors blown off by a miserable Pistons team that had entered Friday’s game having lost six of their previous eight contests.
Pierce was asked after Friday’s loss if the Nets are going into games thinking they are just going to walk out of the arena with a win instead of trying to earn it. He misunderstood the question, but then perfectly summed up the state the team is in.
“You haven’t seen our record?” he asked. “We don’t give that off to no team in the league.
“When you’re under .500 … I’ve played on teams where you walk in and you just assume you’re going to win and there was a fear factor in there. We don’t have that presence yet. We’re under .500 scratching and crawling trying to get there.”
It’s going to take until at least after the All-Star break to get there – if not longer.
2. If the Nets are going to get over .500 sometime soon, one thing that would help them is improving their record in the second halves of back-to-back sets. Fans on Twitter during Friday’s debacle were claiming excuses were being made for the Nets when saying they were playing on the second half of a back-to-back, but the fact of the matter is this team almost never wins after playing the night before.
The Nets are now 2-9 in those situations, with their two wins coming in Memphis when the Grizzlies were missing both Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, and at home against a dreadful Magic team.
If you want to play devil’s advocate, you can say three of those losses came against the Pacers, and another came against the Clippers, and that’s fine. But the Nets have also lost twice to a bad Pistons team, as well as to an even worse Lakers squad.
Here are the final nine games the Nets will play on the second halves of back-to-back sets, in order: at the Bulls, Lakers and Nuggets, home against the Raptors, and then at the Pelicans, Knicks, Sixers, Magic and Cavaliers.
Only one of those teams is over .500 (the Raptors are two games over), and the Nuggets are at .500. Any excuses about having to play against quality rested opponents go out the window. Now it’s time to see if the Nets can get some of these games for a change instead.
3. For all of the complaining about not bringing Kevin Garnett to Detroit that fans were doing on Twitter, the fact is it was exactly the right move to make.
Garnett has been excellent over the past few weeks, and the plan that Kidd has had in place since before training camp began is clearly working well. Does anyone really think that the slender 37-year-old was going to do anything against a young, athletic behemoth like Andre Drummond, who finished with 15 points and 22 rebounds?
The truth of the matter is even after Friday’s miserable showing, the Nets are two games in the loss column behind Toronto for first place in the Atlantic and homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs, and just three games out of third place.
If the Nets were where, say, the Knicks are, and were three games out of a playoff spot, there would be a better argument to have had him play. But given where they are, and how well they’ve played, this was the right move to make.