On Tuesday night, the Brooklyn Nets delivered a respectable account of themselves in a 118-110 defeat to the Boston Celtics. An eight-point defeat against the team with the best record in the NBA isn't too bad, especially for a Nets team that's been struggling as of late. Little did Mikal Bridges and company know that, on the second night of a back-to-back against the same opponent, they'll be suffering one of the worst losses imaginable, a 50-point loss, 136-86.
From the get-go, the Nets did not look as though they belonged on the same court as the Celtics even though Boston was missing Jaylen Brown and Al Horford. They shot 30.2 percent from the field and 26.7 percent from deep as they fell down by 36 points, 68-32, at the halftime intermission.
Simply put, this is the kind of loss that would have an entire organization sound some alarm bells, because, as Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy so eloquently put it, that was “a masterpiece of dogs**t”. Mikal Bridges urged his team to figure it out and do so quickly as this is the kind of ineptitude that is tough to stomach.
“We got beat by 50. It's not just, ‘Let it go.' A lot of s**t is not right. And you got to fix it,” Bridges said in his postgame presser, per Brian Lewis of the New York Post.
Indeed, this is not the type of loss you just brush off, especially when this blowout is a culmination of the Nets' struggles for the past few months. Mikal Bridges is a player who has grown accustomed to winning basketball, so for him to see his team mired in this level of play is sure to induce some headaches on his end.
Now, it's unclear what the Nets must do to fix the situation, as Bridges urged them to do. Positive shooting regression can help a lot toward that end. But you don't lose a game by 50 without being mentally checked out, and Brooklyn must do a better job of putting in the effort and fighting on every possession, especially when they're facing a talent deficit on most nights.
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