The Nets fell to the Portland Trail Blazers 134-99 Monday night at Moda Center, dropped to 17-55 and saw their losing streak reach eight games. For Portland, with a Play-In Tournament berth there for the taking, there was no interest in letting this one drift.
Toumani Camara looked unstoppable for the Trail Blazers, finishing with 35 points and nine made 3-pointers. Even so, there were stretches when the Nets were competitive enough to hang around.
Nic Claxton, back in the starting lineup after sitting out Sunday’s loss in Sacramento, gave the Nets an early lift. He made three of his first four shots, Nolan Traore handed out three assists in his first five minutes, and Brooklyn pieced together an 11-8 lead while Portland stumbled through four turnovers and missed three of its first eight attempts. For a few minutes, the Nets were sharp, organized and trading buckets.
Once Jordi Fernández went to his bench, Portland found another gear and Brooklyn couldn’t slow it down. The Blazers ripped off a 13-2 run late in the first quarter to turn a competitive start into a 28-18 edge with 2:45 left. Tyson Etienne helped keep the game from slipping away completely, knocking down a pair of 3-pointers over the final 2:32 of the quarter, while Chaney Johnson and Ben Saraf added layups. Even so, Portland still carried a five-point lead into the second after shooting 56.5% from the field, with second-chance points already creating separation.
Then came the stretch that broke the night open. Donovan Clingan opened the second quarter with an easy dunk. Brooklyn then lost Camara twice on the perimeter, and he buried 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions. In less than two minutes, the Nets were down 12. The execution only got shakier from there.
Brooklyn shot 26.3% in the second quarter and turned it over seven times. Camara scored 16 points in the period alone and had 23 by halftime, a reflection of how badly the Nets struggled to get organized both at the point of attack and behind it. Portland went into the break up 69-51, and while Brooklyn had some balance offensively, it didn’t have answers. Claxton and Saraf and Ziaire Williams each scored 10 points in the first half, and Johnson chipped in eight, but the Nets’ defensive breakdowns in the paint and on the perimeter swallowed whatever good they were generating on the other end.
Brooklyn was still without Michael Porter Jr., Egor Dëmin, Day’Ron Sharpe, Noah Clowney, Terance Mann, Drake Powell and Danny Wolf. Josh Minnott, who scored 22 points and hit six 3-pointers against the Knicks on Friday, made his first start since being acquired by the Nets after not playing in Sunday’s loss at Sacramento. He joined Williams, Claxton, Traore and Jalen Wilson in what became Brooklyn’s 32nd different starting lineup of the season.
Any hope of a push after halftime disappeared quickly. Six free throws from Deni Avdija and another Camara 3-pointer helped stretch Portland’s lead to 22 with 9:11 left in the third. Scoot Henderson then took over for part of the quarter, scoring 12 of his 13 points and going 3-for-3 from deep. Brooklyn did force eight turnovers in the period, but it still shot just 38.1%, and Minnott and Wilson were the only Nets providing much life offensively.
The game was gone by then. Portland’s 24-point lead entering the fourth swelled to 33 after Jrue Holiday knocked down a 3-pointer, and Camara kept pouring it on with his eighth and ninth makes from long range. He had an emphatic hand in a game that looked, for long stretches, exactly like one team playing for something immediate and another just trying to survive.
That didn’t mean Brooklyn had nothing to take from it. The Nets competed as best they could, and there were at least a few individual performances worth carrying forward, even if they came buried inside a 35-point loss. Etienne led Brooklyn with 18 points, one rebound and four assists in 24 minutes, while Williams added 16 points and four rebounds.
Brooklyn continues its four-game West Coast trip Wednesday against the Golden State Warriors at Chase Center. Monday also marked the final day of Malachi Smith’s 10-day contract, and after two straight nights on zero days of rest, the Nets won’t face another back-to-back turnaround until April 10.