After being beaten by the Celtics, Steve Nash walked to the sidelines for a video interview, trying to make up for the team's loss: "The Celtics played well, they knew very well what they were going to do on the court, and we were a brand new team. Our players don't yet know how to work with each other, we've never played together before and in my opinion that's the biggest gap between us. ”
He's right, the Nets have indeed become a brand new team. At the beginning of the season, their starting five were Durant, Harden, Griffin, Joe Harris and Clarkston, and when Durant returned from injury, he was shocked to find that the only four starters he knew with him were Bruce Brown. Maybe Drummond, who couldn't shoot, and Curry, who was very good at shooting, triggered his muscular memory, allowing him to score 31 points in his first game of comeback, but those points didn't change the Nets' fate of being slaughtered by the Heat without Jimmy Butler, Kyle Lowry and P.J. Tucker, leaving KD himself worried in front of the media: "There are less than 20 games left in the season, and I know we're in a bad position right now, but we have to get out of this predicament on our own." ”
Nash isn't without trying to crack the Nets' dilemma. His method is to change the formation, to keep changing. Dragic became the 19th player to start for the Nets this season, equalling the Nets' record of the season. The season isn't over yet, the Nets have changed 37 starting lineups this season, and nash has never picked the same five-man start in two consecutive games in the past 15 games. The set of starts he tried against the Heat was great in the first half, but in the second half there was nothing he could do with The Joint Defense, and left the base-paying flankers like Caleb Martin and Max Strus to take 20 points each.
In the following game against the Celtics, Nash continued the idea of this lineup, only replacing Dragic with Irving, who could play away games. Facing the Nets' long-held three-guard formation, the Celtics' forward twins struck hard: Tatum scored 54 points (18 in the final quarter) and Jaylen Brown scored 21 points. Seth Curry, Patti Mills and Dragic were at a loss against the Second Boston League's defense. Robert Williams delivered 5 thunderbolt blocks that made Drummond look stupid, old and slow on the field. Aldridge the Elder responded on the offensive end, but after Tatum hit him again and again, Nash struggled to replace him in the final five minutes of the game.
Irving, who hasn't played in three weeks, scored 19 points in that game. He recently commented heavily on New York City Mayor Eric Adams' vaccine policy — which, of course, would do nothing to get him back to the Barclays Center right away. After he stomped on the Celtic logo and was thrown a water bottle by a fan, Irving returned to the TD Garden Arena for the first time. Naturally, you can only hear "Boo" boos when he enters, but when he leaves, you hear the fans shouting "Kerry Sachs". Carey himself very AQ analogously compared it to "the ex-girlfriend who was dumped by you but is still waiting for the breakup explanation", but if you put aside his mouth hard filter to watch the game, this ex-girlfriend is not only not as bitter as he said, from the performance of punching scumbags to meat, it is definitely a female hero.
The more poignant thing is that it can be seen that while Irving is having a bad time, the Celtics have been doing well lately. The Celtics have won 21 of their last 27 games since this game, and they have climbed to fifth in the East after the season, where they did not fare well at the start of the season. The Nets, on the other hand, lost more than 50 percent of their winning percentages, and since Irving's return to the team, they have played a wave of 9 wins and 21 losses, falling from the first place in the East to the ninth place in the East, and have only won three of their last 20 games. Before the All-Star Game, Nash had said the team was in bad shape because it was "too tired" and needed a break. After the All-Star Game, the well-nourished Nets played a tragic wave of 1 wins and 5 losses.
Whether judging from the recent record or the performance of the opponents, we can easily draw this conclusion: the Celtics have produced good chemistry through half a season of running-in, the players have established a tacit understanding and sense of identity with each other, and Ujerri has helped the team to knead into a whole and play a good performance by insisting on what he is good at. And all of this is the complete opposite of what happened to the Brooklyn Nets.
Durant continued to fire in the second game of his comeback, scoring 37 points, becoming the 23rd player in NBA history to score 25,000 points, which became the only consolation for the Nets in this game. After another loss, his expression became optimistic: "Worrying is an easy thing, it's easy to get angry, it's easy to break defenses, and it's easy to blame our difficult season on a variety of factors. But we need to keep playing. There are still 17 games this season, and we still have to play one by one, day by day. I never put myself on the spot as savior, but I know I can help the team, I have a lot of confidence in this team and we will cheer up. ”
The Brooklyn star is back, and Durant is not only in good health and in good shape, but also not depressed by the loss, which is good news for Nash. At the end of the press conference, he concluded: "We haven't been together long enough. We were missing the most important player in the team before, and it takes time for everyone to learn to build chemistry with him. Today, after being defeated by an opponent in the fourth quarter, I feel like we can grow from our failures and it's all valuable lessons. I feel like over time, we're going to play better. ”
Nash said it well, but he may have forgotten that the lineup currently used by the team is also unlikely to be the final lineup for the Nets this season. Ben Simmons, who got it from Harden's trade, hasn't played yet. There's a lot of people who are curious about what Simmons has been doing lately, and Big Brother Mills revealed a little bit about his recent work: "It's mostly a lot of talk. He and our staff had meetings, chatted, watched movies, went shopping. Then his shooting coach and physical therapist would give him individual training to get him back on the court sooner rather than later. ”
We did see some video footage of him undergoing rehabilitation and training, and Kyle Korver taught him to shoot while he was playing iron, just as awkward as Ke Jie teaching netizens to play Go on a live broadcast. From those videos, he's a little bit further away from returning to the field. Nets general manager Sean Max said in a recent interview that he hopes Simmons, who hasn't played an official game in nine months, will "get back on the team" after playing against the 76ers on Friday and then increase training until he comes back — he hasn't practiced with the Nets once so far. At the post-game press conference against the Celtics, a reporter relayed Marx's words to Nash and asked him when Simmons would be available.
Nash's answer was as we expected: "I don't think I can know the answer to this question." But if he can come back, of course it will be a roar! ”
Today is March 8th, a month before the end of the regular season. From the above information, we can infer three messages, the first is bad news, the second is bad news, and the third is not good to say whether it is bad news:
First, Max uses the word "hope", Nash says he "doesn't know", that is, the team and Simmons have not yet reached a consensus on when to increase the amount of training and when to return; second, in Simmons's current state, it is basically unlikely that he will have a chemical reaction with this team at the beginning of the playoffs; third, there will be another "brand new Net" that will appear in the playoffs...
Wow.