Here are my three thoughts on the Nets’ 103-86 loss to the Pacers on Monday night in Brooklyn:
1. Jason Kidd often has avoided, to a fault, criticizing his players during his first few months on the job as head coach. But he leveled a broadside at his entire roster following Monday’s loss to the Pacers, one that felt closer to a 47-point loss than the 17-point final margin.
“It’s getting very close to just accepting losing. We’re kind of getting comfortable with losing,” Kidd said. “We’ve got to make a stand with that because when things get tough, do we just give in? Most of the time right now, we do.”
This has been the most stunning thing about this Nets team. By acquiring Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Jason Terry, the Nets were supposed to have been given a heart transplant after last season’s team was considered to be lacking in that department.
Instead, this team has often seemed lifeless, failing to respond nearly every time an opponent has hit them in the mouth. After Monday’s game, Kidd appeared to put all of the blame on his players in their first game after learning Brook Lopez was lost for the season.
“We don’t have enough timeouts,” he said. “I can only call as many timeouts to slow it down and call the play and get us in the zone, but we still have to find a way to put the ball in the basket and get stops. That’s not just an individual – that’s a team – and that’s what we have to find out.”
We’ll find out how the Nets respond. The Pacers are possibly the NBA’s best team, but this wasn’t a good sign.
2. You want to know the difference between the Nets having Lopez and not? Look at his replacement, Mirza Teletovic.
Teletovic has played well this season, shooting well from 3-point range, so this isn’t an indictment of him, but merely a statement of fact. Lopez was an efficient – if often awkward-looking – scoring machine, averaging more than 20 points per game while shooting over 56 percent from the field.
Teletovic is a proficient — at best, prolific — option from behind the 3-point arc, but is just 12-for-31 (38.7 percent) on shots from inside of 8 feet. With fellow starter Kevin Garnett now shooting 19-for-48 (39.6 percent) on those same shots, the Nets went from having maybe the best inside scorer in the league to having a pair of sub-par ones in the starting lineup. That’s a radical change, and one that’s going to take time for them to adjust to.
3. The Nets needed Deron Williams to step up in Lopez’s absence, and he came up woefully short Monday night.
Williams was easily outplayed by his counterpart, Indiana’s George Hill, and finished the game with nine points and eight assists – along with four turnovers – in 32 minutes.
“I need to play better,” Williams said, adding that he was fine after appearing to tweak his left ankle – the one that’s cost him 11 games this season – shortly before exiting the game for good in the fourth quarter. “I need to be more aggressive for us to have a chance, especially with Brook going down.
“That’s what I talked about, stepping up, and so tonight was just a bad game for me. [I was] throwing the ball all over the place [and] couldn’t hit a shot, so it took my aggressiveness away and I think I played into what they were trying to do.”
It’s good of Williams to fall on the sword – something both Garnett and Paul Pierce didn’t do as both blew off the media Monday night. But with the Nets now 9-18, Williams simply can’t have performances like this. The Nets need him to earn the max contract he signed last summer, and lead this team out of the morass and back into the playoff race. We’ll see if he’s capable.