The Brooklyn Nets have been playing better basketball since the NBA calendar turned to December due to how much the team has improved on the defensive end of the floor. The last four games have been rough for Brooklyn for the most part as they endured a three-game losing streak before beating the Denver Nuggets 127-115 on Sunday and it looks like the losing streak will cost them.
“After a 7-3 stretch, the Nets lost three straight games, with a 20-point defeat in Washington on Friday. But they got back on the winning side over the weekend, with Michael Porter Jr. leading the way against his old team,” John Schuhmann wrote in his latest power rankings for NBA.com on Tuesday. The Nets were ranked 21st in his power rankings last week, but they fell all the way to 26th after their losing streak.
“The Nets are now 0-6 without their leading scorer [Porter], with the six losses having come by an average of 17 points,” Schuhmann continued. “They’ve scored just 103.3 points per 100 possessions in his 694 total minutes off the floor, though the offense has been much better (117.3 scored per 100) in 145 minutes with Cam Thomas on the floor without Porter. (Defense is another story).”
To Schuhmann’s point, Brooklyn’s three-game losing streak to the Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, and at the Washington Wizards was tough to watch, especially since the offense was so bad without Porter in the lineup. Granted, Porter didn’t play against the Rockets or Wizards while Thomas (hamstring injury management) and starting center Nic Claxton (personal reasons) didn’t play at Washington.
Ultimately, Schuhmann is right in pointing out that Brooklyn has been unable to win any games when Porter has been unable to take the floor. Sunday’s win over the short-handed Nuggets was impressive to see, especially since Porter looked like himself after missing the two aforementioned games due to an illness. However, part of the reason that the Nets have dropped so far in the power rankings is due to their inability to win without Porter.