It appeared, at least for a few minutes, as if the Nets might be able to pull off a miraculous comeback victory Wednesday night — the kind of win that could be the spark this team has needed to bring it to life after a sluggish and injury-filled first few weeks.
Instead, the Nets once again failed to make enough plays when it counted, and lost 99-94 to the Lakers in front of a sellout crowd of 17,732 inside Barclays Center.
Now losers of nine of their last 11 games, the Nets (4-11) now are staring at a brutal back-to-back in Houston Friday and Memphis Saturday to end what can only be described as a disastrous opening month of the season.
“It’s tough,” said Paul Pierce, who went 4-for-17 — including missing a potential game-tying 3-pointer in the game’s dying seconds that rimmed out. “We are still learning.
“Hopefully we learn before it is too late, before we are completely out of the playoff mix, but we still have time. … We just need to be able to hold down the fort a little bit better than what we have been doing.”
They likely will have plenty of time to sort things out, given the Eastern Conference has only two teams over .500, and the Nets are just two-and-a-half games out of first place in the pathetic Atlantic Division.
But this was yet another game in which the Nets had their chances to take control of the game in the final minutes and failed. After Mirza Teletovic — who scored 14 of his career-high 17 points in the fourth quarter — hit a 3-pointer to bring them to within 92-91 with 4:25 remaining, the Nets missed seven consecutive shots, and an errant pass from Pierce to Joe Johnson was intercepted by Wes Johnson for a fast-break dunk that gave the Lakers back the lead for good with 1:33 left.
“We are doing the right things offensively,” said Nets coach Jason Kidd, who caused a stir when he spilled his drink with 8.2 seconds left, allowing assistant coach John Welch to draw up the play that got Pierce his potential game-tying shot despite having no timeouts left. “Defensively we are getting stops and we are limiting them to one shot, which we’ve had problems with.
“We are executing down the stretch, we are getting wide open looks. … It’s just a matter of them going in, and they will. That’s what we believe in as a coaching staff, and as players. We will make these shots, and if they keep presenting themselves we will be fine.”
Nick Young led the Lakers (8-8) with 26 points, while Johnson had 18 points to lead five players in double figures for the Nets.
A miraculous comeback was necessary because of a truly dreadful first 15 minutes, causing the Nets to fall behind by 27 points early in the second quarter. The Lakers got one wide-open 3-pointer after another early on, allowing them to open the game going 8-for-10 from behind the 3-point arc.
The Nets trailed 34-18 after the first quarter and, after Jordan Farmar opened the second quarter with four straight 3-pointers, were down 48-21 less than four minutes in.
“We are not going to be perfect,” said Kidd, understating the team’s early struggles. “The Lakers came out and they hit us right off the bat, but the guys kept fighting.”
To their credit, the Nets immediately responded with a 15-0 run allowing them to get within striking distance heading into halftime, when they trailed 54-40. Then, they put together a second straight impressive showing in the third quarter — a surprising development for what easily has been the league’s worst third-quarter team.
Behind 10 points from Pierce — who had gone scoreless in just under 11 minutes in the first half — the Nets shot 50 percent from the field in the third and committed just one turnover, winning the quarter by five points. But the Nets, like so many other times this season, couldn’t get it done when it counted, and now only have the pathetic Eastern Conference to thank for their entire season not already being in serious jeopardy before its first month has even ended.
“We just got to continue to work on things, get better at it,” said Kevin Garnett, who had four points and nine rebounds.
“Obviously we’ve been a team on paper that’s been assembled to be successful, and we have the personnel to be just that. We’ve been hit with some early-season dilemmas, but no excuses.”
The Nets may not be making excuses, but they already have more than enough losses.