ATLANTA — A streak has turned into a slump, and suddenly the Nets have gone from thinking about seeding to worrying about survival.
The Nets had to get their heads right, after getting manhandled 141-118 by the Hawks. In a game they had to win, they had their worst defensive performance of the season.
Against the worst team in the Eastern Conference, the Nets (26-32) dropped a third straight and tumbled into the eighth playoff seed. If they don’t watch themselves, they could fall into the lottery.
“If you don’t feel embarrassed after losing to a team that we beat three times — beat by quite a large margin last time — they came out and embarrassed us,” Garrett Temple said. “Orlando passed us up, so if we don’t have an edge for the next 23 games we’re in the wrong sport. Just a matter of us trying to win as many games as we can for this playoff push. This is a wake-up call for us.”
The Nets have slept through the past week. But maybe this kind of nightmare will jolt them awake. The loss to team they’d beaten a franchise-record eight straight — and the Magic’s win over the Timberwolves — dropped them to the eighth seed, a half-game behind Orlando, with the Wizards five games further back.
“If we continue playing like we’ve been playing, we won’t be in the playoffs, period, point-blank,” Temple said. “That’s our goal, to make the playoffs. But we have to change something. We have to compete at the end of the day, or we’ll be sitting at home watching.”
A week ago, after having won seven of 10, the Nets led the Magic by 2 ½ games for the seventh seed, and were 5 ½ clear of the Wizards for the final playoff spot. But after losing to the Orlando and Washington, this was even worse.
Against a Hawks team they had beaten a club-record eight straight times, they allowed 51.5 percent shooting, and 19-of-39 from deep.
Brooklyn had swept the earlier three meetings by an aggregate 44 points. When they met last month, the Nets led by as many as 39 in a 22-point laugher. But this one went the other way.
Trae Young had 22 points and 14 assists. John Collins added a game-high 33 points, and Cam Reddish 26.
The Nets’ porous defense wasted Spencer Dinwiddie 24 points and 13 assists go to waste.
“[Defense is] our identity. We’re seventh in the league in defense, and [Friday] we looked like 800th in defense,” coach Kenny Atkinson said. “We lost our defensive identity.”
The Nets used a 15-2 run to jump ahead 29-16 on a DeAndre Jordan alley-oop dunk. They still led 50-44 after a pair of Dinwiddie free throws, but coughed up 13 unanswered points in a 2:25 blitz. Two Young free throws left them in a 57-50 hole that their defense never gave them a chance to climb out of.
When the Hawks started raining 3-pointers, the Nets’ collective heads sank.
“When they made shots, we put our head down a little. When they missed shots, they got their offensive rebound. So, the part where we didn’t tow the line is our physicality in the rebounding,” Atkinson said, adding, “they had the hit-first mentality. They were by far the more aggressive team.”
Both Dinwiddie and Joe Harris admitted as much.
“It shouldn’t [have that effect]. I mean, if it was the 2015 Warriors; but it’s not like that,” Dinwiddie said. “We should’ve had a mentality of let’s cut their water off. Let’s go get stops make a statement and go win this game. We didn’t do that.
The Nets trailed 108-98 through three quarters, and it just got worse in the fourth. Outrebounded 52-38, the Nets were nowhere near physical enough.
Now they head to Miami and Boston as the road trip gets far tougher. What will they have to do to bounce back against the Heat?
“Play the exact opposite of the way we did [Friday],” Dinwiddie said.