The Brooklyn Nets were handed their fourth straight loss, as they once again come out out of the gates inconsistent and flat.
It was a tale of two halves for the Nets, who gave up 36-points in the first quarter of their 104-99 loss to the Sacramento Kings (11-20) and 28-points in the second.
The Kings came out hot in their second night of a back to back, shooting 76.2 percent on 16 of their first 21 shots, leaving Nets coach Kenny Atkinson “perplexed” with his team’s first half performance.
“They have good players on the other side and you can’t get in a hole like that,” Atkinson said. “It is a disappointment in our defense and our defensive mentality to start the game.”
The story of the first half wasn’t just how easy the points came for the King’s, but their dominance on the board, as they out rebounded Brooklyn 28 to 17, behind Randolph, who finished the game with 21-points, eight rebounds, and the rest of Sacramento’s bigs.
“We’ve rebounded pretty well over the course of the year, but looking at the teams we have coming up we have to be much better,” Atkinson said during the post game conference.
However the second half was an entirely different story for Brooklyn, who brought the lead down to 101-99 by the last minute of the game after their second unit went on a 14-2 run behind Caris LeVert(13-points) and Joe Harris(14-points).
Unfortunately for the Nets two costly turnovers within the last 11.1 seconds of the game by Quincy Acy and Spencer Dinwiddie ended their chances of a comeback victory.
While Brooklyn came out aggressive on both ends of the floor in the second half, it was a story of too little too late as their poor shooting performance in the first half (38.6 percent) was too much to overcome.
Spencer Dinwiddie, who led Brooklyn in scoring with 16-points, and Allen Crabbe both had poor shooting nights and were among the starting unit that got off to a slow start.
“You know we’ve got to make shots, we can’t turn the ball over, etcetera, etcetera,” Dinwiddie said after the game. “But at the same time, if we play basketball the way we’re supposed to like we did in the second half and they don’t score 64 points in the first half, we’re not in that situation.”
This was a point of emphasis before the game for coach Atkinson who wanted the Nets to look for better shots and reduce the percentage of bad shots against the Kings, but instead got more of the same.
Of Note
Rebounding his way to a milestone, 16-year veteran power forward Zach Randolph became the 20th player in NBA history with at least 18,000 points and 10,000 rebounds last night after grabbing his first rebound of the game. Randolph is only the third active NBA player with 10,000 rebounds and over 18,000 points, joining Pau Gasol and Dirk Nowitzki.
