There\u2019s losing, and there\u2019s rolling over. <\/p>\n
This was the latter.<\/p>\n
The Nets opened the second half of the season by taking a 112-84 thrashing at the hands of the Cavaliers before 19,432 in Cleveland on Thursday night. <\/p>\n
They trailed by as many as 43 points in a game that was never moderately competitive.<\/p>\n
It was the Nets\u2019 eighth wire-to-wire loss. <\/p>\n
No other team has more than five.<\/p>\n
The worst part about this beating was they never bothered to fight back: no board work, no getting back in transition, no defensive resistance. <\/p>\n
It was a rout so comprehensive, the Nets (15-39) couldn\u2019t pick out a single thing that could\u2019ve turned it.<\/p>\n
Donovan Mitchell drives to the basket during the Cavaliers\u2019 win against the Nets on Feb. 19. Imagn Images<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything: physicality, intensity, all those things that we didn\u2019t match.<\/p>\n
And they were obviously way better than us,\u201d coach Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez admitted.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike I said, their physicality, their intensity was as it should be for a winning team. So we were not even close.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carved up by former Nets star James Harden (16 points, nine assists) and by Donovan Mitchell (game-high 17 points), the visitors had no defensive discipline. <\/p>\n
They gave the Cavs whatever they wanted, allowing 64.3 percent shooting in the first half.<\/p>\n
The Nets hit just 34.5 percent on the night and 28.6 percent from deep. <\/p>\n
They were led by Michael Porter Jr.\u2019s modest 14 points on just 1-of-6 from 3. <\/p>\n
Donovan Mitchell reacts after a dunk during the Cavaliers\u2019 Feb. 19 win over the Nets. IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n
Newcomer Ochai Agbaji added 13.<\/p>\n
It was one-sided, with the Nets down 101-59 after ex-Nets guard Dennis Schr\u00f6der\u2019s free throws with 1:09 left in the third.<\/p>\n
The silver lining was it helped the Nets\u2019 tanking efforts. <\/p>\n
They moved into a tie for fourth in the lottery standings, pulling even with Washington, just one game out of second \u2014 both Indiana and New Orleans are 15-41 \u2014 and two ahead of Utah.<\/p>\n
Dennis Schr\u00f6der drives to the basket during the Nets\u2019 loss to the Cavaliers on Feb. 19. Ken Blaze-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
They were flat from the start. <\/p>\n
Going down 4-0, Fern\u00e1ndez immediately called a timeout. <\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t help as he watched his team let Evan Mobley \u2014 in his first game back after missing seven straight with a calf injury \u2014 run right down the lane for a dunk. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFollow all the basketball buzz in Brooklyn\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Nets by Brian Lewis, exclusively on Sports+.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The Nets allowed the first eight points and let the Cavs hit their first six shots.<\/p>\n
Down by nine, they conceded an 11-2 run to double that deficit. <\/p>\n
That deficit swelled to 43.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was two mistakes that were completely controllable, and it just tells me about the readiness of our players. It was the lack of effort and readiness, and I\u2019m not going to let it fly. And didn\u2019t wake up,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know we\u2019re better, our standards are much higher than this. Now we\u2019ve got to move on to the next one, and hold everybody accountable \u2014 myself included \u2014 and go and fight better [Friday in Oklahoma City].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s losing, and there\u2019s rolling over. This was the latter. The Nets opened the second half of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3767],"tags":[7,670,247,3803,193,6,671,3027,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-613140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn-nets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-brooklyn","10":"tag-brooklyn-nets","11":"tag-brooklynnets","12":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nets","15":"tag-ny-sports-minute","16":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116101589835473317","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613140","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=613140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}