For the second time in three games, the Brooklyn Nets were run off the court in embarrassing fashion. The Nets fell 126-89 to the Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday at Intuit Dome.
Losing is one thing. Embarrassing routs are another. While Brooklyn is mired in a tanking season, Jordi Fernandez is fighting to prevent his team from accepting outcomes like Sunday's.
“We won the third quarter, and we were competitive for those [last] six minutes of the second. And outside of that, the other 30 minutes, we played like a losing team,” Fernandez said. “You can lose, and you can be a loser. So for 18 minutes, we lost and we were competitive. And for 30, we were losers. So we have to decide what we want to be and who we want to be.”
Los Angeles won the first quarter 38-14 and never looked back. Brooklyn had no answers defensively for Kawhi Leonard and James Harden, who combined for 35 points on 10-of-18 shooting in the first half.
Nets suffer 37-point loss to the Clippers to open five-game road trip
Offensively, Fernandez's squad looked lost against a Clippers defense that was selling out to stop Michael Porter Jr. The Nets shot 29-of-85 (34.1 percent) from the field and 9-of-43 (20.9 percent) from three. Brooklyn's four active rookies — Egor Demin, Drake Powell, Danny Wolf and Ben Saraf — combined to shoot 10-of-35 from the field.
Meanwhile, Porter had one of his quietest games of the season while facing constant double teams. Brooklyn's lead option tallied nine points on 3-of-11 shooting in just 21 minutes.
“They were just the better team tonight. It wasn’t much to it. They just dominated us last game and dominated us tonight,” Porter said. “We’ve got to get back to competing every night. So, I think from the players to the guys on the bench to the coaches, we all just got to get back to competing. I could’ve definitely done a better job. Our starting unit could’ve done a better job. It was just an all-around bad effort.”
The Nets were the butt of many jokes following a 54-point drubbing at the hands of the New York Knicks on Wednesday. They turned in a spirited effort during a double overtime loss to the Boston Celtics on Friday. However, Sunday's loss was another sizable step back in the team's pursuit of meaningful, competitive basketball.
After a 7-3 stretch in December, the Nets have lost 14 of their last 16 games. They've posted the NBA's worst net rating (-14.0) during that span.
“It's part of life and part of learning and part of finding the next Nets,” Fernandez said of his team's recent struggles. “We know and believe that we have the right vision here of doing what we want to do and being successful as an organization with great ownership and management. We're obviously going to need the right pieces on the floor that playing compete to a certain standard. One out of [the last] three [games] as far as being competitive is not good enough. We should be three-for-three competitive, whether you win or lose. That's another step. We'll move on, we'll learn from it, we'll hold each other accountable.”
Following Sunday's loss, the Nets sit in fifth place in the draft lottery standings. However, they have the same number of wins as the New Orleans Pelicans and Sacramento Kings, who sit in third and fourth, respectively.
