The Brooklyn Nets are at the point of their season where if they want a chance of making the Eastern Conference play-in tournament, they cannot afford to lose games against some of the easier opponents on their schedule. While Brooklyn has only been slightly better than some of the worst teams in the NBA, they are also going through some key injuries as well.
The Nets lost at the Detroit Pistons on Thursday 118-112 and while some would say that there isn’t much separating those two teams at this point of the season, it’s still a win that Brooklyn needs to keep its playoff hopes alive. Center Nic Claxton spoke on how the Nets have to improve their rebounding as a team if they want to come away with some of these games at a time where they are missing some key frontcourt members.
One of the main storylines that came out of Thursday’s loss as how ineffective guard Mikal Bridges was over the course of the contest. Bridges, who is averaging 20.9 points per game for the season, scored just 13 points in the contest and shot just 4-of-11 from the field.
While Bridges is dealing with some discomfort in his right wrist after taking some contact to it during a 106-102 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies on Monday, he has not been listed on the injury report so the assumption is that the injury shouldn’t be affecting him too much.
Either way, if the Nets are going to win enough games to pass the Atlanta Hawks for the 10th and final seed in the play-in tournament, Bridges has to be better. He said so himself after Thursday’s loss at Detroit:
“Just bad on my part. Just continue to keep doing bad habits so personally, I just got to be better. Yeah, we was fighting, but they (the Pistons) was just getting a lot of rebounds and just executing better than us.”
[lawrence-related id=57775,57770,57760]