The Brooklyn Nets are at arguably their most important portion of the season as they have to pile up wins despite facing their most significant amount of injuries at the same time. Despite being favored in their matchup at the Detroit Pistons on Thursday, Brooklyn did not do what it was supposed to do to win the game.
The Nets lost at the Pistons on Thursday 118-112 and in the contest, it was clear that one of Detroit’s points of emphasis was controlling the glass on both ends of the floor. The Pistons won the rebounding battle 50-28 and part of that was due to the fact that Brooklyn was missing Ben Simmons, Cam Johnson and Day’Ron Sharpe from its frontcourt rotation.
The other part of that huge discrepancy was Detroit picking up 13 offensive rebounds thanks to the activity of players like Jalen Duren (three offensive rebounds) and Ausar Thompson (two). Since the Nets were missing some key frontcourt players, the Pistons took advantage of how much smaller Brooklyn was once Nic Claxton went to the bench.
Claxton had one of the better performances on the team as he put up 15 points, 10 rebounds, two assists, one steal, and three blocks and even he felt that he could have been better on the boards. Here’s what Claxton had to say about the team’s overall rebounding performance:
“The biggest difference-maker was probably the rebounding and them just corralling the missed shots and it’s a big momentum change. So, I would say the rebounding… we all just got to do a good job of just hitting somebody and we can also do better on the offensive glass. I need to do better on the offensive glass for sure. I think I’m probably averaging like one (offensive) rebound in the last 10 games so I need to do better.”
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