As bad as the blowout loss to the Phoenix Suns was, Tuesday’s 119-114 loss to the Utah Jazz was an even tougher pill for the Nets to swallow. Brooklyn had what looked like a comfortable lead at halftime, but wound up losing in a nail-biter.
As Kenny Atkinson pointed out to reporters in Utah, there are no moral victories from a loss, but the Nets did show signs of growth. In particular, the Net finally attacked their opponent early in the game — something they haven’t done much to start 2019-20.
Though the Nets had an advantage over the Jazz with Utah being on the second game of a back-to-back, Joe Harris felt the first half result was an accurate depiction of Brooklyn’s intensity in the first half, per Tom Dowd of BrooklynNets.com.
The compete level was a lot higher. Against Phoenix that was uncharacteristic of us, not what we want Brooklyn Nets basketball to be about. And tonight we did a much better job just coming in, having effort from the get-go. There was a couple miscues here and there but that happens over the course of the game, but the effort, the compete level was there all night.