The mentality has completely collapsed! Maybe the loss to the Clippers, who could not be more miserable, was a careless loss of Jingzhou, but after being held down by the Grizzlies and beaten steadily, the Nets' mentality completely collapsed. On January 4, Beijing time, in an NBA regular season game that has ended, the Nets lost 104-118 to the Grizzlies and suffered three consecutive defeats. After losing this game, the Nets' name as a pseudo-strong team so far this season is solidified, because so far, the Nets have not won a game against the top four teams in the East and West. Judging from the current situation of the Nets, the real fear is not that it is difficult to win the game, but that the team's locker room is likely to have problems.
Facing the freshman Grizzlies, the Nets were able to barely rely on the offense to bite the score in the first half of the game, but in the second half, with the Grizzlies wave after wave of fierce attacks, the Nets still could not resist. It is worth mentioning that in a timeout when the score was nearly 30 points behind, the Veteran James Johnson on the Nets bench had a fierce quarrel with Harden, and the "boxing king" Johnson directly stood up and charged Harden when he was emotional. After the game, such a discordant scene triggered a discussion among netizens, and combined with Harden's sharp speech after the game, the outside world has thought that there have been problems in the Nets' internal locker room.
In a post-game interview, Harden said that the team's defensive details were not done well, he praised the performance of the team's rookies in the final quarter when chasing points, and when it came to Irving's imminent return, Harden said that Irving's return is certainly worthy of happiness, but the team also needs to solve some internal and personal problems. After the last loss to the Clippers, Harden said that Mills' problem of leaving the court was not worth mentioning compared with the other problems of the team, and now he has once again emphasized that there are problems within the team that need to be solved, which shows that the problems inside the Nets have seriously affected the team's performance.
Some people think that the Nets' problem is with head coach Nash, who used an 8-man rotation to play against the Grizzlies in this game. But the 8-man rotation will have physical problems, coupled with the Grizzlies are all young people who can fight and grab, losing 28 rebounds in the whole game is enough to prove that the Nets' rotation lineup was eaten raw by the Grizzlies with their bodies. Some people also believe that due to Irving's return, some of the Nets' veterans are dissatisfied with their emotions and can't work hard in the game, because Irving's return will squeeze out their original playing time, which is also the reason why the Nets can't attack and defend in the game. And Harden's exaggerated performance of the rookies who were abandoned by Nash in regular time in the interview, but did not mention other regular rotation players, which is also worth pondering.
In short, from Durant and Harden single-handedly leading the team to win consecutive victories, to now the manpower is neat but suffered a losing streak, the Nets' sudden collapse situation is definitely a certain reason. After losing both games, Durant and Harden's statements were meaningful, and they could even read what might be wrong inside the Nets. Even if the Nets can end the losing streak and win some games next, the Nets' personnel are likely to change to a certain extent, because the atmosphere in the Nets locker room is now surging and if the management cannot properly solve the problems that have emerged, even if Irving returns, it will be more difficult for the Nets to compete for the championship.