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The Nets completed their Western Conference road schedule last night in Houston and remarkably they didn’t win a single game. That’s Oh-and-15 against West teams in their houses.

There were some winnable games overall and certainly on this trip. It wound up that three of the four-games on this trip were winnable. You wouldn’t have thought the Dallas game initially, but the Nets were up 18 in the second period and Dirk Nowitzki was nowhere to be found.

But Memphis, especially without Zach Randolph, was beatable, and certainly Houston was if the Nets were willing to work hard or commit a hard foul. By the way, Luis Scola just scored again.

“We’re disappointed because we played well enough in some of these games to win,” interim coach Kiki Vandeweghe said.

This is one of the many stories of the Nets’ season – their inability to win games that they could and should.

It’s one of the many reasons they’re in this position with 16 games to go. They need to win three games to avoid tying or setting a new record for the worst season in NBA history.

The Nets can, and probably, should avoid that record. Yes, they have had stretches like 18 consecutive losses. But twice they won three in 14 games and once three in 15 games. So it’s possible.

Also, the schedule lightens up a little with seven games currently against teams under .500, including at Philadelphia, Washington and Indiana and home for Sacramento, Detroit and Chicago.

Really, this is all the Nets have to play for at this point: pride and avoiding the record. But it’s going to take a commitment to doing what needs to be done on both ends of the floor.

That means establishing Brook Lopez and going to him early and often. It also means Lopez keeping his head in the game. His frustration on this trip was obvious. The Nets also need Devin Harris getting in the lane and creating shots for himself and others. They can’t keep falling behind big and needing Jarvis Hayes’ late-game shooting to get them back into it.

It also means defending, blocking out, limiting penetration and knocking someone down once in a while.

When the Nets remake this team over the summer they need to address that shortcoming. They need a hard-nosed player up front who will deliver a hard foul when it’s warranted.

Teams have no problem coming inside on the Nets and getting whatever they want. This is nothing new. The Nets really haven’t had an enforcer-type since Kenyon Martin or maybe Jason Collins.

No one is suggesting you hurt someone or incite a fight, but you can commit a hard foul to let the opposition know they can’t just stroll inside and get layup after layup.

Teams have no-layup rules. Most of them are good teams, but still. When Scola and the Rockets were scoring more than half their points in the paint, it would have been understandable if someone sent a message.

Anyway, it’s hard to be something you’re not and the Nets’ aren’t a physically tough team. They haven’t been for years. But they have 16 games to be something they don’t want to be. That's up to them.

Al Iannazzone covers the Nets for The Record (Bergen County, N.J.)

HOUSTON –- It was only one night ago that interim coach Kiki Vandeweghe and Devin Harris applauded the Nets’ effort in making a dramatic comeback only to lose by two at Oklahoma City. The Nets followed that game with effort-free basketball and lost 116-108 to the Rockets in a game that wasn’t nearly as close as the score indicated.

The Rockets dominated and controlled this game with their speed, hustle and one perpetually moving big man that just couldn’t be stopped. Well, maybe he could have if the Nets tried guarding him.

Luis Scola is a strong player, a winning player that any playoff team would love to have. He just works and works and works. Scola has a relentless attitude, which has made him a success in the NBA. But on this night, he didn’t have to work that hard en route to a career-best 44-point game. The Nets gave him whatever he wanted -– layups, spins, stick-backs, open jumpers. And Scola made them pay, hitting on 20-of-25 from the field to hand the Nets a bitter defeat before they went back to New Jersey, 0-4 on this final trip against the Western Conference.

“It was impressive,” Brook Lopez said. “He’s always going, always crashing the boards, getting second and third shots and getting easy buckets. A lot of that’s on us, not boxing out.”

Oh, the Nets did none of that.

Scola should have had 50. The game should have been way out of reach. What kept the Nets in it was Jarvis Hayes duplicating his torrid late-game shooting in Oklahoma City the night before. Hayes scored 14 points in the final 13:35, including 12 in the fourth. But this game belonged to Scola and the Rockets because of how much harder they worked than the Nets.

As we wrote yesterday, there are games where hard work is not going to be enough for the Nets. But this wasn’t one of them.

The Rockets don’t have that much better of a roster than the Nets, if at all. But they beat them, relatively handily, because they have an NBA head coach in Rick Adelman and they have guys committed to doing whatever it takes to win, and that means out-working teams.

Houston lost Yao Ming to injury, Ron Artest to the Lakers and sent Tracy McGrady away before trading him, and the Rockets are 33-31. That happens because of coaching, defense and hustle.

That’s what makes this a tough loss for the Nets, although predictable, too. The Nets were completing a back-to-back where as the Rockets hadn’t played since Tuesday, so they had fresher legs. You could see it.

Besides the effort factor, the Nets lost the game early when they started fast behind Lopez only to see him fizzle. Lopez missed a couple of layups and picked up some fouls he didn’t agree with, including one on Scola about 75 feet from the basket with 35 seconds left in the half. That was Lopez’s third. He tried to stay in the game mentally, but more fouls and another missed layup and you could tell he wasn’t there.

But it wasn’t just Lopez, who finished with 22 points and seven turnovers. It was the Nets’ overall defense and intent on that end of the floor. Scola’s brilliance notwithstanding, the Rockets doubled up the Nets on offensive rebounds (14-7), had a 27-4 advantage on second-chance points, a 23-9 differential in fastbreak points and a 60-42 edge in points in the paint.

“I do think that we got a little bit outworked,” Vandeweghe said.

Not a little bit. Totally.

Al Iannazzone covers the Nets for The Record (Bergen County, N.J.)

OKLAHOMA CITY – There were several times in this game when it appeared the Nets were done, especially with Courtney Lee hampered by a sprained right thumb.

The Nets shooting guard has been lights out lately. But Lee couldn’t hit a shot. He actually made two -– both layups, including one at the buzzer.

So when the Thunder were up 16 with two minutes left in the third and 15 with the fourth quarter nearing the midpoint, it looked like the Oklahoma City Thunder were on their way to another win and the Nets another loss.

That wound up happening, but the game was much closer than anyone would have guessed. The Nets lost 104-102, making that their third tough-luck loss on this four-game trip.

“The guys are learning that we’re not good enough to play without a real high level of effort for 48 minutes,” interim coach Kiki Vandeweghe said. “When we have a slight letdown, that’s when teams pull away from us.

“That happened a couple of times at the beginning of the game, in the first quarter and sometimes in the third quarter. But they’re learning how to stay away from that.”

The truth is, it’s hard for the Nets to win no matter what they do.

They were down huge early against the Knicks last Saturday and won by 20. They were down 21 to Memphis to start this trip and had chances to take the lead late.

The Nets were up 18 against the Mavericks Wednesday on a night when Dirk Nowitzki wasn’t at his best, but Dallas had too much talent and the Nets couldn’t score. Last night, it was a talent issue again, yet the Nets were right there with 1:30 left, down four and two shots to get within two or less.

The easy thing to say is the Nets can’t fall behind that big, but even when they are leading they have trouble hitting shots, getting stops and closing teams out.

Perhaps the only thing to take from this game is that no matter what their record says –- now 7-58 -– the Nets showed they will fight until the final seconds. It doesn’t really matter because there are no moral victories, but at least they’re not laying down. It’s because none of these guys wants to have his name next to the worst record in NBA history.

“I like our effort,” Devin Harris said. “We’re giving ourselves a chance to win the game in the end. But the way we’ve been starting out, beside the Dallas game, has been a little bit disheartening. But I like the way our bench is coming in and really getting us back into the game. The second half really has been the key for us.”

What was impressive about this comeback was Lee was 2-for-9, Brook Lopez just 6-for-14 with 14 points and Harris missed all four of his three-point tries. Yet the Nets were right there at the end.

Their bench played huge as Keyon Dooling (15 points) gave them a big lift in the first half, Terrence Williams (14 points) was solid throughout and Jarvis Hayes (16 points) was clutch late. He scored 13 points in the game’s final 13:48. He knocked down some big threes that gave the Nets hope.

But too much Jeff Green early –- 20 of his 27 points came in the first half –- and Kevin Durant late –- 13 of his 32 were in the fourth quarter –- and not enough Nets stops and makes led to their 58th loss.

Afterward there was praise for the Nets effort, deservedly, but effort is not enough. The Nets have to learn how to play with leads and not let teams get out to big leads themselves. Maybe then they'll get the results they want.

Al Iannazzone covers the Nets for The Record (Bergen County, N.J.)

A shovel will go into the ground today in Brooklyn. It’s probably not the same one the Nets have used to bury themselves, though.

The Nets need that one because they continue to throw dirt on themselves.

This may sound crazy, but the Nets played a winnable game last night here against the Mavericks. It was winnable because Dirk Nowitzki couldn’t have been more invisible, winnable because the Nets were rolling early and led by as many 18 points.

But the Mavericks have too many other players, including someone named Jason Kidd, and they just weren’t going to have their 12-game winning streak end against the Nets. Instead, Dallas won for the 13th straight time, beating the Nets 96-87 last night.

If you break it down, it was similar to many of the Nets’ losses, including the game against Memphis when they couldn’t capitalize on Zach Randolph being out. Nowitzki was in the building and on the floor, but he made just three field goals, and just one after halftime.

The Nets could have had their most impressive win of the season – if they could contain Kidd and Caron Butler and didn’t go through one of their predictable shooting slumps.

Consider these numbers: The Nets were 18-for-28 over the game’s first 15:51 and scored 41 points. Over the final 32:09 they were 16-for-55 and had just 47. Brook Lopez had 10 points in the first 6:22 and zero after that.

But the Nets were in the game at the end, like in Memphis. They had several chances to tie or take the lead and couldn’t. In the last 3:08 they made one field goal and scored two points.

Kidd, meanwhile, had 20 points in the game, including nine in the fourth – all on three-pointers. The big one gave the Mavericks a 90-85 lead with 2:43 left.

But there were other backbreakers, like Butler’s 20-foot step-back jumper to put the Mavs up five one minute later and then a multiple-possession trip that resulted in a Brendan Haywood put-back and 94-87 lead with 50.8 seconds remaining.

From backbreakers we go to groundbreakings. This is the big day, the day Bruce Ratner envisioned when he purchased the Nets.

The current Nets’ owner took over in 2004 and his mission was to build an arena in Brooklyn. After nearly six years, a shovel will go in the ground, just weeks shy of Ratner losing control of the team.

Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov purchased majority interest from Ratner in September and is expected to take control in early-to-mid April if all goes well.

The ideal situation for the Nets would have been for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to be taking place soon rather than this. But you need the groundbreaking before the big ceremony for a grand opening.

That’s the next big thing, but it would have been much more advantageous for the Nets, with this summer’s free agency looming, to have the new building to attract players.

The Nets will try to sell Newark for 2-3 years to the likes of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Amar’e Stoudemire. And it’s nicer, better and more appealing than the Izod Center. But Brooklyn could have been what sold James and other top-tier free agents.

New York carries much more weight than New Jersey.

Maybe James signs a two-year deal with Cleveland and then comes to the Nets after that, just when they’re ready to open Brooklyn. Who knows? I’m sure that’s crossed some people’s minds

But this should be a banner day for the franchise, even if loyal New Jersey followers of the team don’t feel that way. They don’t want to see the Nets leave.

Take solace in this: there’s still another two years at least that the Nets will play in New Jersey and they will be much better than this one.

Al Iannazzone covers the Nets for The Record (Bergen County, N.J.)

MEMPHIS –- You wouldn’t think winning two games in a row would be so hard, but look at what the Nets have to go through to put together a single win.

They won Saturday in New York after falling behind by 16 in the first quarter, and were aided mightily by their best 3-point shooting night of the year and the Knicks’ NBA record-setting worst.

It would have taken an even more impressive comeback for the Nets to get their first winning streak and eighth win of the season because of another really slow start. They were down by 21 last night with 25:30 of action left, but in the Nets’ minds, they had Memphis right where they wanted them.

But we’ve all seen it happen so many times: teams fight and scratch and claw to get within a bucket or two and have numerous chances to get over the proverbial hump and can’t. Grizzlies 107, Nets 101 was that game exactly.

This was the fourth consecutive game the Nets were down big early and either needed the bench to lift them, or some super performances, or a ridiculously good –- and bad -– shooting night either to bring them back into the game or to win it. But they can’t keep going at this pace.

“I don’t want to say we can’t,” Devin Harris said. “I think we play better from behind, but we definitely don’t like giving teams head starts the way we’ve been doing. Once we correct that, it will be easy to contend in that fourth quarter instead of coming back from big deficit.”

It sounds easy, but the Nets have shown that it’s not. And with Dallas and Oklahoma City as the next two teams on this trip, the Nets could be staring at huge holes early with slim-to-no chance of recovery.

This was a winnable game from the jump. The Grizzlies were without their All-Star power forward Zach Randolph because of a back injury. The Nets should have been thinking pounce, and it looked at first like they were as they had chances to go up by 10 in the first period but couldn’t convert.

And when the snowball started rolling in the first half, the Nets couldn’t stop it because of poor transition defense, poor halfcourt defense and a poor showing by Brook Lopez. They have been few and far between, but Lopez was a non-factor early. He didn’t grab his first rebound until 5:07 was left in the third and the Nets were down 13.

But Lopez wasn’t the reason the Nets lost. He just had a bad first half and he let some calls affect him on both ends as Marc Gasol exploited him and the Nets for 16 first-half points.

The reason the Nets lost was a collective lack of fight and energy in the first half and then having to expend too much of it late.

Courtney Lee was great again with a career-best 30 points and Harris had 28. But as a team, the Nets missed five layups in the final 7:40 and 15-of-23 shots overall in the fourth period.

“We got good shots,” Harris said. “We had some solid looks. We got to the rim. We had some tough breaks. We couldn’t get the tip-ins. We were right on the edge but we couldn’t get it across.”

That’s what happens often when you fall behind big and come back but never forge ahead. But the Nets have to stop thinking that they have a team right where they want them when they’re behind big. Not every team is the Knicks.

Al Iannazzone covers the Nets for The Record (Bergen County, N.J.)