Brooklyn Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn has been consistent in his messaging about how he approaches games, such as making no excuses for poor play because that can always be corrected. However, Vaughn has also been consistent about how he approaches the area of turnovers/mistakes because of how that facet of the game can affect winning and losing.
In Tuesday’s 121-107 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Nets made plenty of mistakes that contribute to their loss. For one, instead of executing so that they can close the first half with a 16-point lead, Brooklyn missed easy shots on their end while allowing Oklahoma City to get easy shots on the other end to allow a 6-point swing in a little over a minute.
Also, in the second half, Brooklyn did not bring energy on either end of the floor and that allowed the Thunder to build on its momentum that it ended the first half with. Oklahoma City won the third quarter 38-20 because of Brooklyn’s inability to run a team-centric offense and that allowed the Thunder to get out and run whenever Brooklyn missed. Vaughn expanded on the mistakes that were made by the Nets that contributed to the loss:
“Yeah, the three point shooting wasn’t, you know, high priority for us. Lu Dort came out and made some shots to start the half. But, it was it the plays before that. Their (Oklahoma City) ability to impact the winning from offensive rebounding, from the 50/50 balls that we didn’t get, those are things that we can control. We didn’t finish the (first) half the right way, and then, that bled into the third quarter. So, we talked about every single possession for this team matters, every 50/50 Ball matters, you got to get dirty, you got to get on the floor, you got to get that possession, you got to take on the battle of boxing out your dude every single time. And, you got to come back and help your teammate if your guy doesn’t go to rebound. We didn’t do that often enough. And, we paid for it tonight.”
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