NEW YORK — Brooklyn Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn has a lot on his mind knowing that he knows who his team will be facing in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. He has been trying to communicate that he is only worried about the current game, but one can imagine that he is also thinking about the future given the stakes. However, he made sure to give his players credit for how they performed on Sunday.
“Yeah, you give a lot of credit to first of all being able to play the amount of minutes that the guys did,” Vaughn said after Sunday’s 134-105 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, their first-round opponent. Despite the 29-point loss, there were wonderful performances by guard Cam Thomas (46 points, one point shy of tying career-high of 47 points) and two-way forward RaiQuan Gray (16 points, nine rebounds, and seven assists) that could indicate bigger roles for next season.
“And, to even take a guy like RaiQuan Gray to be able to show up tonight and be pretty productive on the floor and help us, had a chance like you said, to kind of be in the game a little bit,” Vaughn continued. Gray made his NBA debut on Sunday for the Nets after being signed to his two-way deal on Saturday.
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