DALLAS — The Nets let go of the rope Sunday. There was a disconnect, bad body language and even worse defense.
And the result was as horrible as it sounds, a 130-93 beating at the hands of the Mavericks before a crowd of 19,184 at American Airlines Center.
Looking sluggish and spent, the Nets got shredded on defense, never led, fell behind by 37 and were noncompetitive the whole night.
“Yeah, obviously defensively we were not connected, and we made a lot of mistakes. And then a team like this, when they’re in rhythm with the players that they have, it’s when you can get hurt,” head coach Jordi Fernández said. “They made some tough ones, and we also allowed some. I thought offensively, we created good shots, but we again turned it over too much — and the nature of the turnovers, 17 turnovers for 24 points. That’s just not acceptable.
“And a lot of them were like we’re trying to run in transition and we give it to the other team, and those are tough. We still created 21 turnovers with 25 points, and I think that that’s the pressure and who we want to be. But overall, a poor defensive game.”
That’s an understatement.
The Nets (2-8) saw Cooper Flagg dominate with 25 points, 12 assists and five rebounds while Kyrie Irving scored 21 against his former team.
Michael Porter Jr. led the Nets with 19 points and nine boards, but Julius Randle struggled with just 13 and finished a minus-33. This team isn’t capable of winning with that sort of performance from Randle.
The Nets allowed 57.1 percent shooting, including 61.9 percent in a first half that saw them trail 66-46, and unlike the Hawks a day earlier, they never rallied.
The Nets had caught Atlanta on the tail end of a back-to-back and built a 17-point cushion. They even led by four with 1:45 to play before coughing up 10 unanswered points, letting the Hawks close the game on a 14-7 run.
Fernández had hoped they could replicate their energy from the night before, but actually sustain it. Instead, apparently they had exhausted it.
“The second quarter, we didn’t make shots, didn’t play defense,” Randle said. “They were giving a lot of stuff off of switching. But credit to them, they executed really well.”
The Nets shot 38.8 percent and 11-for-39 from deep.
Brooklyn fell behind by 13 in the first quarter, and that deficit doubled to 26 in the even sloppier second.
When Randle threw the ball behind Porter coming upcourt, it was a turnover on the sideline with 1:48 left in the half. The latter banged the ball on his head in frustration.
But the sequence that really typified the evening for Brooklyn?
Noah Clowney got whistled for a foul on Morez Johnson Jr., and the two had to be separated with 3:51 left in the third quarter as the officials went to replay to see whether the Net forward had committed a flagrant. The replay showed that Johnson had actually brazenly knocked Clowney to the court on the other end of the floor moments earlier, so he was assessed a technical.
Then Moritz Wagner clanked the ensuing free throw with the Nets trailing 92-62.
Clowney promptly fouled out to salt the wound.
“We couldn’t make shots, they made a lot of them. And then once adversity hits, it seems to be really difficult for us to kind of get our head out of … whatever it is,” Wagner admitted.
“It’s never all bad, and it’s not all good, you know. It never is as bad as it looks, but our body language does drop. We lack a little maturity there as a group. It’s nobody’s fault; it’s just everybody kind of in new roles, everybody getting used to it, which is an excuse. It’s something we have to look in the mirror for, everybody for himself and kind of figure it out.”
