Too shorthanded. Too sluggish. A step too slow.
And when it was done, the undermanned Nets saw their winning streak snapped with a 128-109 loss to the Trail Blazers before 1,773 fans at Barclays Center.
“I don’t like to make excuses. I just think we weren’t sharp,” coach Steve Nash said.
“Offensively we are [a] little bit stagnant, didn’t play with the pace that’s necessary. And defensively, we didn’t take care of some of the details in our scheme. It’s going to happen. It’s a matter of what we take from it. That’s a good team playing well with healthy bodies, and we just weren’t ourselves.”
With the game up for grabs — Portland was up by just a single point late in the third quarter — the Nets couldn’t grab it. They allowed an 18-4 Blazers run and never challenged again.
Damian Lillard finished with a game-high 32 points, including 11 in the decisive run. Jusuf Nurkic (23 points, 11 rebounds) punished the Nets early.
When the Nets tried to blitz Lillard, the Blazers picked them apart with ball movement. Portland shot 51.6 percent for the game.
“We weren’t up to our usual standard in the blitz,” Nash said. “We made some poor decisions. We were a little sluggish, a little late on some of our rotations, caught sleeping at times instead of being proactive in making it more difficult at the point of contact, which made the exit pass easier. So, not a really sharp performance from us.”
Kyrie Irving, back after sitting out Thursday’s game, had 28 points, but just three assists. Playing without Kevin Durant, James Harden, Bruce Brown and Nic Claxton, the Nets shot 42.1 percent overall and 13-for-41 from 3-point range, looking sloppy on the tail end of a back-to-back.
“We just weren’t sharp, and it was too many breakdowns,” Nash said. “You can take it when [Lillard] lines you up from 35 feet and makes a few of those. … But some of the other ones where we fall asleep, we’re not at the level of the ball on a switch, we switch when we’re supposed to be blitzing, or blitz when we’re supposed to be switching.
“Some of those throughout the game were too much for us to handle. Then offensively, we weren’t sharp. Balls weren’t on time or on the money, we didn’t play with enough pace, we didn’t spread ’em out, and we just didn’t have that collective spirit.”
The Nets (43-21) saw their lead in the Eastern Conference cut to just a half-game over the 76ers. Now, they head out to play at Milwaukee (currently in third in the East) on Sunday and Tuesday.
Durant and Brown might be back by then. They were sorely missed by the Nets, who got 16 points from Jeff Green and 15 from Mike James.
“I’m not one for excuses, man. They just outplayed us,” Green said. “Dame [Lillard] got ’em going, made a couple 3s in a row and gave everybody confidence, and they went on a run. I credit it to that, not that it was a back-to-back.”
“Like coach said, the mental lapse that we had defensively, that’s something that we just have to correct a little more. We can’t allow it to be multiple possessions. One here and there, but having them in a row allowed them to get into that lead.”
The Trail Blazers took their first legitimate lead with an 11-2 run in the second quarter, a Carmelo Anthony follow dunk putting them up 43-37 with 5:16 left before halftime.
The Nets pulled within 59-57 at the break and kept knocking on the door time and again but couldn’t take the lead.
The Nets were down 72-66 when a 9-4 run pulled them within a point on an Irving pull-up.
But after finally getting within 76-75, Portland went on its 18-4 run, starting with seven unanswered points. Lillard sandwiched a 32-foot rainbow and a 33-foot jaw-dropper around a Robert Covington 3. Lillard’s latter shot, from the logo, put Portland ahead, 94-79, with 58.7 seconds left in the third.
The Nets never got closer than 99-91 the rest of the evening.
“[The key was] a guy named Dame Lillard and also some of their other guys that made some big plays,” Irving said. “We just weren’t in the right spot tonight a few times. So, they paid us back.”
"do it" - Google News
May 01, 2021 at 09:43AM
https://ift.tt/3u7P5Y4
Kyrie Irving can't do it alone as Nets fall to Trail Blazers - New York Post
"do it" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2zLpFrJ
https://ift.tt/3feNbO7
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Kyrie Irving can't do it alone as Nets fall to Trail Blazers - New York Post"
Post a Comment