Cam Johnson, D’Angelo Russell and Ben Simmons were all ruled out ahead of the Nets’ matchup against the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday at Intuit Dome.
Even when lacking significant firepower in the past, Brooklyn at least put up a fight. It scrapped. It clawed. It routinely made expected slaughters watchable. Jordi Fernandez’s group continued to fight, regardless of who was out there.
But Wednesday’s 126-67 massacre wasn’t that. It was a humiliating experience for Fernandez and the entire organization.
The Nets (14-27) kept it competitive early and closed the first quarter on a 7-0 run. That spurt tied the game at 21 entering the second. Two-way forward Tosan Evbuomwan came in off the bench and did his best to keep a bullish James Harden in front.
Then Brooklyn just quit. It was outscored 37-14 in a second quarter that saw the Clippers open up a 58-35 lead at halftime. More worrisome was the Nets’ complete lack of effort coming out of the locker room. They allowed an 81-30 run, which spanned the second and third quarters, and found themselves down 102-51 entering the final frame.
A frustrated Noah Clowney was ejected with 9:55 left. Brooklyn trailed by 53 at that point. And the Clippers kept pouring it on, shamelessly, securing the largest loss in Nets franchise history: 59 points. The previous franchise-high was 52 back in 1978-79. Their 67 points were also the fewest scored by an NBA team in a game this season, and the second lowest total in a decade.
Brooklyn’s loss tied for the 10th-worst in NBA history. It finished five points shy of its lowest team point total in franchise history. This disaster came one night after the Nets, albeit much healthier, scored 132 points and beat the Portland Trail Blazers by 18.
Fernandez and his team have done far more with less. There were no excuses for Wednesday’s performance, tanking or not. The Nets had 36 assists and 13 turnovers Tuesday night in Portland, with Russell and Simmons handling the rock. With both sidelined against the Clippers, they had 15 assists and 22 turnovers.
But the absences of Johnson, Russell and Simmons shouldn’t equate to this. Brooklyn shot just 30.1% from the field. You almost felt sorry for everyone involved. And no player, coach or assistant was exempt from blame.
“When you see a loss like this, a lot of things went wrong,” Fernandez said. “The energy and competitive spirit was not there, plain and simple. But right now, the only thing I can do is support my guys. It’s never a good experience to go through this, but analyzing the whole season, none of our guys work for this, and they’ve competed the whole time. So, all I can do is support them, obviously own this myself as well, and show up the next day and try to be better.”
The end of the Nets’ current six-game West Coast swing can’t come soon enough. They’re 1-3 in their last four, with losses to the Clippers, Nuggets and Jazz. They’ll finish up the trip with games against the Lakers and Thunder on Friday and Sunday.
Regardless of how those games play out, it doesn’t get any worse than what Brooklyn put on film Wednesday night.