In an NBA regular season game that ended this morning, the Brooklyn Nets suffered a 21-point defeat at home to the Oklahoma City Thunder 109-130. After this campaign, the Nets' second place in the East dropped to third in the East, and was overtaken by the Miami Heat, just 0.5 wins away from the fourth-placeD Milwaukee Bucks.
The Nets today sat at home to meet the challenge of the Thunder, in addition to Irving's home can not play, Durant, Aldridge and other core players have been truce, the Nets' starting lineup with Harden as the main lead to role players. The Lack of Multiple Cores highlighted the problem in the first quarter, causing the Nets to start unfavorably and fall behind by 12 points in the first quarter. The Nets' offensive performance in the second quarter was decent, but the defensive end was full of holes, and the defense that faced the opponent's counterattack was just a stretched hand to give the Thunder too many easy shots, trailing by 19 points at the end of the half.
Returning from the break, the Thunder relied on a wave of 18-6 offensive attack to close the score, but their unstable offensive and defensive attack and defense caused the point difference that had just been caught up was quickly widened, this quarter they bombed 32 points but only recovered 2 points, harden led the team to play a 14-3 offensive attack in the last quarter to catch up with the score again, but the Thunder always got the points at the key moment, and in the middle of the quarter they rained three points to widen the point difference again to more than 20 points to take over the game. In the end, the Nets lost 21 points at home to the Thunder at home, 109-130.
In this game, on the Nets side, Harden cut 26 points, 7 rebounds, 9 assists and 3 steals, Brown 10 points, 8 rebounds and 2 steals, Thomas played 33 minutes off the bench, cut 21 points and 3 rebounds, Millsap 8 points, 10 rebounds and 3 blocks, Duke 13 points and 5 rebounds, Sharpe 4 points and 6 rebounds, Griffin 4 points and 4 rebounds. Except for Harden and Thomas, the other players behaved decently.
But the Nets lost this game for no reason, first of all, the impact of the Devils' schedule, they beat the Bulls in Chicago yesterday, and then rushed to New York, when asked how they felt about the recent difficult schedule, Harden said: "Too tired, tired. Because of COVID-19, everything has gone too crazy. We didn't get back to New York until around 5 a.m., and then I had to go to bed until 7 a.m., and then it was going to race again in the evening. Harden continued. (After yesterday's Nets vs. Bulls, today's back-to-back vs. Thunder, Chicago and New York are about 800 km apart)
Indeed, the consumption of such a schedule for players is huge, and players cannot get effective rest, which leads to a decline in their competitive status, and they naturally cannot play their due strength when playing. Now, the Nets are in third place in the East with a record of 26 wins and 15 losses, because of the win-loss relationship, the Miami Heat recently achieved a three-game winning streak, which naturally squeezed the Nets out of the second position.
The current Nets are indeed a bit elusive, playing the weak team rotation Durant, the game that should be won can not be won, and against the strong team, let Durant, Harden and other players play 40+ minutes on the field, and in the end may not be able to win, it is true that some small losses are big.