The Brooklyn Nets played their first game under interim head coach Kevin Ollie on Thursday as they try to play their way back into the Eastern Conference playoff picture. The Nets are in a tough position to do so as while they have one of the easiest schedules in the NBA, they have to get used to another change.
Brooklyn lost at the Toronto Raptors on Thursday 121-93 as it looked like only one of the teams in the contest were ready to play coming out of the All-Star break. To be fair, the Nets were competitive on Thursday against the Raptors, which was a vast improvement over their 50-point loss to the Boston Celtics heading into the All-Star break, but similar to the Celtics loss, the bottom eventually fell out.
Two of the glaring issues that came up during the Toronto loss was how many second-chance points the Raptors were scoring and how much Toronto was scoring in transition over the course of the game. Toronto outscored Brooklyn 14-10 in second-chance points, but the more glaring stat was the Raptors outscored the Nets 46-10 in fastbreak points.
If anything, Thursday’s loss to the Raptors showed that the Nets still have to work to do when it comes to protecting the basketball, Brooklyn committed 20 turnovers that resulted in 32 points for Toronto, and its transition defense. Nets guard Cam Thomas, who put up 19 points and four assists in the loss, gave his reaction to the blowout loss after the game:
“We had good energy, getting to the bucket, being aggressive and then, I don’t know probably just we had a few turnovers. Again, the transition piece and then they started getting offensive rebounds, which led to one or two threes so it’s tough. They just started doing what they were good at, transition, getting offensive rebounds, second chance points, so we just got to clean that up and just stay locked in for a full 48 (minutes).”
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