After the shot clock expired Tuesday night, and captured another disappointing game for the Brooklyn Nets, coach Steve Nash begged his players to look inside and ask themselves ‘what type of team they want to be.’
“I don’t think we’re going out of our lives every day and sacrificing time to be average at anything,” Kyrie Irving said after Brooklyn’s third consecutive loss. “And we look very average. And we have the talent that the eye test offers that we have to dominate.”
Brooklyn has developed a pattern this season of playing the teams incredibly hard – and often beating – at the top of the standings, but losing to the league’s underdogs. In fact, with the 122-111 defeat in Detroit on Tuesday, the Nets are now 7-11 against teams with a record of less than 500 – the most such losses in the league.
Jerami Grant tied his career high with 32 points for the Pistons. Irving, who played with a sprained index finger, finished with 27 points and seven assists. James Harden added 24 points and 12 assists.
Brooklyn will remain without Kevin Durant, who is in the NBA’s coronavirus detection protocols, until at least Friday, after being exposed to a teammate who tested positive for COVID-19 last week.
Detroit jumped to an early double-digit lead and controlled the game for almost the entire 48 minutes. During a timeout in the first quarter, Harden apparently had a lively conversation with DeAndre Jordan about the team’s defensive effort. Over the course of the game, Nash Jordan jerked aside several times.
“I don’t think they necessarily chose him,” Nash said. “It’s an emotional sport. We find ourselves in the hole and then get a little emotional.”
Jordan, who said he could not remember what Harden specifically said, conceded that he needed to be defensively better.
“I need to be better for us, defensively,” Jordan said. “We all need to be better. But I just take a little more ownership at the end of the ball because it’s a thing I love and a big part of why I think I’m out there for us. I have to be better, but I take a lot of it. ‘
Since the Nets traded for James Harden in mid-January, it was, according to ESPN Stats & Information, the last in defensive efficiency. And while the Nets were able to reduce the lead of Pistons to single digits, they could never get over the hump.
“A lot of teams come out very comfortably against us,” Irving said. “And then it’s the feeling for the rest of the game that we play ‘catchup’ and that’s just not the way to play as a competitor, but just always down.”
“We just have to turn the corner. And we have not done that yet, but we will do it. And I tell you that the league will be up to date when that happens.”