{"id":666775,"date":"2026-03-19T11:59:01","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T11:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/666775\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T11:59:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T11:59:01","slug":"nets-hit-new-low-in-loss-to-thunder-as-season-continues-to-unravel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/666775\/","title":{"rendered":"Nets hit new low in loss to Thunder as season continues to unravel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every time you think this Nets<\/a> season can\u2019t get any worse, somehow it does.<\/p>\n

Wednesday night at Barclays Center delivered the latest low. Brooklyn fell to the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> 121-92, dropped to 17-52 and watched its losing streak stretch to five games in a performance that unraveled almost immediately.<\/p>\n

For the game, the Nets shot 36.7% and committed 23 turnovers. Jared McCain paced Oklahoma City with 26 points, three rebounds and two assists off the bench. Jalen Wilson led Brooklyn with 15 points and five rebounds, also on reserve duty.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou feel embarrassed\u00a0when you score 24 points in a half of basketball,\u201d head coach Jordi\u00a0Fern\u00e1ndez said. \u201cAnd I do believe, no doubt in my mind, that our guys are better\u00a0than this. But it\u2019s not about what you believe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think our readiness to play the game was not there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nets were already shorthanded, playing without Michael Porter Jr., Ben Saraf, Egor D\u00ebmin and Day\u2019Ron Sharpe. Then, as if the night needed another twist, Brooklyn announced between the first and second quarters that Noah Clowney would miss the remainder of the game with a right wrist sprain.<\/p>\n

By that point, though, the problem wasn\u2019t one player. It was the entire night.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma City beat the Nets 105-86 at Paycom Center on Feb. 20, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> didn\u2019t play in that one. On Wednesday, he did, and the gap between the teams was obvious.<\/p>\n

The first few minutes looked like neither team could buy a bucket. That didn\u2019t last. Once the Thunder found their rhythm, they didn\u2019t just take control, they proceeded to embarrass Brooklyn on its home floor.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma City was missing Luguentz Dort, Jalen Williams and Isaiah Hartenstein, but none of that mattered once Gilgeous-Alexander got going. He was healthy, aggressive and surgical. As he heated up, so did everything around him.<\/p>\n

Gilgeous-Alexander scored nine points on 4-for-5 shooting in the first quarter, setting the tone for a Thunder group that shot 50% in the period and built a 28-11 lead heading into the second. Brooklyn, meanwhile, couldn\u2019t get out of its own way. The Nets went 4-for-20 from the field, turned it over seven times and scored 11 points, their lowest first quarter of the season. From there, the game turned into a test of how ugly it could get.<\/p>\n

Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren kept getting to their spots and making Brooklyn pay. The Nets kept piling up misses, breakdowns and turnovers. By halftime, the numbers were egregious. Brooklyn had given the ball away 15 times, which Oklahoma City converted into 22 points, and the Nets went into the locker room down 36 after shooting 23.7% in the first half.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn scored 24 points in the half, tied for the lowest scoring output in any half in franchise history. Tyson Etienne led the Nets at the break with five points on 1-for-4 shooting. Oklahoma City, meanwhile, had multiple players already rolling. Gilgeous-Alexander had 16 points, Holmgren had 10 and McCain had 10.<\/p>\n

Whatever hope the Nets had of making this game competitive never arrived. They couldn\u2019t string together stops. They couldn\u2019t generate clean offense. They couldn\u2019t protect the ball. They couldn\u2019t do anything to challenge the defending NBA champions.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma City led by as many as 42 points, while the Nets never led, despite outscoring the Thunder 68-61 in the second half.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t wait until we\u2019re down to say we want to play this way or that way,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cWe have to be ready to play from the jump.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nets don\u2019t get much time to sit with it. The Knicks visit Barclays Center on Wednesday for the fourth and final meeting between the interborough rivals, and Brooklyn will be looking to avoid a season sweep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every time you think this Nets season can\u2019t get any worse, somehow it does. Wednesday night at Barclays…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3767],"tags":[7,670,247,3803,562,6,671,209,312],"class_list":{"0":"post-666775","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-michael-porter-jr","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nets","15":"tag-shai-gilgeous-alexander","16":"tag-thunder"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116255732927158425","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666775","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=666775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}