Yankees
Nets
The Nets can’t help themselves. They just don’t know how to win. They’ve had much more experience losing.
They’re an imperfect 12 after last night’s 99-85 loss to the Bucks. In case you’re wondering, the all-time mark for losses to start a season is 0-17.
The Nets could set that mark out West and break it at home against Jason Kidd. Now that would be the ultimate insult in an early season that’s been filled with them.
And last night was just another one. It was different than Tuesday’s when the Nets started the game down 9-0 and it expanded to 28-12. But there was something similar about this game, about most games involving the Nets.
You can tell if they’re going to be in it and really have a chance to win by the way they come out in the third quarter. The old line about the first four minutes of the third will tell you all you need to know about the teams, and the game was right on in this case.
In the first four minutes of the third, the Nets were outscored 12-0. Let’s take it to the first 4:20 of the third, it was 15-0, erasing everything the Nets did in the first half to build an 11-point lead.
There was still plenty of game left when the Nets went behind 56-48 on Brandon Jennings’ three, but the game essentially was over. The Nets are resilient, but this was an avalanche that’s hard to climb out of for a team that has just eight guys, especially on the second game of a back-to-back.
The Nets didn’t necessarily run out of gas. Chris Douglas-Roberts is playing 40-something minutes, and he’s competing hard, less than one week after returning from the H1N1 virus. They just don’t have the right players to go on big runs.
Maybe if it was a different eight guys, maybe if Devin Harris was one of them and Courtney Lee another it would be realistic. The Nets could run more and Harris has shown he can score points in a hurry.
But the Nets go through some serious scoring droughts with the group they have. They don’t really have proven scorers. They shot 4-of-23 in the third and scored just 12 points and were beaten 58-37 after halftime.
"Right now we have a tendency where things pile on for us a little bit and we got to be able to try to snap out of it quicker because we know we’re going to be offensively challenged," coach Lawrence Frank said. "We know we can’t give up, whatever it was, 58 points in the second half. And obviously that third quarter was accentuated."
It seems to happen in just about every game. Against Indiana, the Nets started the third just like they did the first, giving up nine consecutive points. This game, as Trenton Hassell said, “It killed us.”
The Nets can take solace in two things now. The first is they play the Knicks on Saturday, so they have a chance to get a win, although New York came back to beat Indiana last night and won all three exhibition games against New Jersey.
The second is Harris appears to be ready to return in that Knicks’ game. Lee also could return, but that’s more iffy than Harris at this point.
But it really won’t matter, though, if the Nets don’t come out ready in the third quarter against the Knicks and match their play. They can put points up in a hurry. The Nets can’t.
Al Iannazzone covers the Nets for The Record (Bergen County, N.J.)
