performance<\/a> against the Boston Celtics was a sign of things to come. The Nets had their issues in that game too \u2014 notably their crunch-time defense \u2014 but they took a formidable opponent right down to the wire. With a career-best night from rookie Nolan Traore (21 points), it was just about the perfect loss in a tanking season.<\/p>\nSunday\u2019s night\u2019s loss to the Clippers just stunk. Ben Saraf scored six points with four turnovers, Drake Powell put up five points and four turnovers, and Danny Wolf shot 3-of-13, inventing new ways to miss layups. Egor D\u00ebmin shot just 3-of-11, but he did hit three straight 3-pointers while getting fouled on another in the third quarter, giving the Nets fans bored enough to keep the game on for that long something to hold onto.<\/p>\n
Not that the veterans did much better. In fact, Wolf and D\u00ebmin were the only Nets to reach double-digits; the team shot 33.7% from the floor and a grotesque 20.9% from deep. However, all 12 Nets played and all 12 scored, including a triple from E.J. Liddell, so that\u2019s something? The highlight of the game may have been Terance Mann getting a technical foul on D\u00ebmin\u2019s behalf\u2026<\/p>\n
Conversely, the Clippers shot 56.4% from the floor, including a tidy 12-of-25 from three. Like the Nets, all 12 of their guys scored, led by 28 points from Kawhi and 19 from James Harden.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s part of life and part of learning and part of finding the next Nets,\u201d said Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez. \u201cBecause 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. And we\u2019re obviously going to need the right pieces on the floor, the play-and-compete is a certain standard. And right now, out of three games, one out of three as far as being competitive is not good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Carrino and Sarah Kustok did a much better job at filling space than I\u2019m doing with the rest of this article, discussing the impending Super Bowl matchup and Kerry Kittles\u2019 career. Carrino even closed with positivity, noting that Brooklyn shot 22-of-25 from the line in the formidable Intuit Dome, dropping a gem: \u201cThe Whammy beats The Wall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez was not so cheerful in postgame: \u201cI brought this up before: You can lose, and you can be a loser. For 18 minutes we lost, and we\u2019re competitive. And for 30, we\u2019re losers. So we have to decide what we want to be and who we want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NBA has not yet announced the date of the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery.<\/p>\n
Final Score: Los Angeles Clippers 126, Brooklyn Nets 89<\/p>\n
The Nets are awaiting MRI results on Nic Claxton\u2019s pinkie. He injured his right pinkie in the loss to the Celtics on Friday, had an MRI on Saturday but the results have not yet come back. On Sunday, he gutted it out, wearing a bandage.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I think it\u2019s his right hand. I know that he\u2019s going to play. He\u2019s got some discomfort, but I really give him credit,\u201d Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez said of Claxton, who finished with six points and five rebounds in 24 minutes.<\/p>\n
Nothing to see here. Move along.<\/p>\n
![\"Christian](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/gettyimages-2254842307.jpg\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\nChristian Petersen\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The Nets continue their five-game road trip by paying a visit to old friend and Coach of the Year candidate Jordan Ott. Tip-off against the Phoenix Suns is scheduled for 9:00 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At first, it was just a bad start. It quickly grew worse. And by the time Kawhi Leonard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3789],"tags":[7,559,4034,192,4032,251,135,4033,4031,6,51809],"class_list":{"0":"post-568580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-clippers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-clippers","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-clippers","12":"tag-laclippers","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-losangelesclippers","17":"tag-nba","18":"tag-nets-scores"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115978714149256068","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}