Nets’ frustrations after loss to Wizards had a different feel

The Brooklyn Nets almost made up for their slow start against the Washington Wizards, but they ultimately came up short.

Win or loss, Kenny Atkinson is always able to acknowledge the good and bad after a game. Naturally, the Brooklyn Nets head coach will stress the importance of certain aspects of his team’s performance more than others.

But Atkinson’s frustration over the Nets’ lack of focus in the first half of their 110-106 loss to the Washington Wizards on Wednesday had a different vibe to it critiques from other games. He didn’t take things a step too far or anything, but Atkinson did make it evident to reporters in Washington that even though he was pleased with his team’s fight late in the game, he was not happy with the mental mistakes of the first half:

We always talk about [the] fourth quarter, and it’s — what about the first two quarters? … Again, it’s that focus I was talking about. I don’t think it was physical. I don’t think it was game plan. I think it was pure[ly] focus. You know, we could all go into our dictionary or … ask a sports psychologist what focus means or what mentally locked in means, but we weren’t. It was evident in that first half.

When asked about Brooklyn’s first half turnovers, Atkinson came back to the same issue:

Focus. … I really — I’m dumbfounded by how we weren’t mentally into the game. Not taking anything away from Washington, but I — there were just some infantile mistakes out there in terms of the turnovers. You’ll have to ask the guys, I’m going to ask them. Not sure.

Taurean Prince was asked about the Nets’ turnover problem in the first half. He didn’t have an answer, stating he’s “already onto the next game” — though Prince did add the mistakes are fixable.

Caris LeVert put it simply when it came to starting games with the right focus level: “That’s our job.” He then added:

We’ve got to come in locked in from the start, no matter who we’re playing, for a full 48 minutes. I feel like for stretches of the game we’ll have it, but not for a full 48 minutes.

Playing a full 48 minutes is a theme the Nets dealt with earlier in 2019-20, and it appears, somehow, that has become a problem again.