The Brooklyn Nets are only two games away from matching their longest losing streak of the 2019-20 season. To make matters worse, there were only two games in between Brooklyn’s current five-game skid and their seven-game losing streak — meaning, the Nets have lost 12 of their last 14 games.
Now, the Nets have played four playoff teams during the current skid — the Utah Jazz, Philadelphia 76ers (twice), Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers — so they’re not losing to subpar opponents. Furthermore, injuries are still a problem for the Nets — most recently, they played without a second big man against the Lakers with DeAndre Jordan (right middle finger dislocation) and Nic Claxton (left shoulder contusion) out.
After Thursday’s loss, Taurean Prince explained what the Nets need to do to combat the constant injury problems, per Tom Dowd of BrooklynNets.com:
We’ve got to realize there are a lot of different lineups. A lot of switch-ups. A lot of things we are trying defensively. A lot of things we are doing as a team to prepare ourselves for a certain way we want to play. We’ve just got to adjust on the fly, be a pro about everything and just continue to do what is put together for the team and try to pull out as many wins as possible.
As for what the Nets have learned during this rough stretch, Prince stressed the importance of not dwelling on mistakes:
Our ability to move onto the next play and not allow things to snowball effect into even worse situations. In these games, we’re right there. Like I said, it’s just minor slip-ups as a team that we can fix. That’s the good part about it, but if we don’t make those slip-ups, we’re in every game.
Kyrie Irving feels the experience has shown the Nets how hard they have to work in order to get to the next level:
We just have to fight even more — that’s really what it comes down to. We have to have that mentality coming into games that although we are undersized at times in matchups — we still have to do the little things — boxing out, getting out in transition, shooting open shots and just making good decisions. We don’t have a lot of room for error. We are going against other good teams – they have pieces out there that are making us work on the defensive end. They get out in transition or we get out in transition – we just have to attack the rim and knock down open shots. I feel like we’ll be alright.
The Nets get back to work on Saturday when they face the Pistons in Detroit at 7 p.m.