Put one more on the board. The Brooklyn Nets came home to host the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night. Once again, Brooklyn fell behind by a bunch. Luckily for them, it wasn’t a 30+ point defeat this time. They “only” lost by 16 points this time. Good for them.
The opponent tonight is trying to get back on the good foot. The Orlando Magic were on the road Tuesday night for a matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder. They got thumped by 36 points. Ouch.
Meanwhile, the Nets were active on deadline day. So we waited and it was smart to do so.
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No Haywood Highsmith. He got waived. No Cam Thomas. He got waived. More on him in a moment. And none of the new players acquired in 24 hours — Ochai Agbaji from the Raptors, Hunter Tyson from the Nuggets and Josh Minott from the Celtics — are playing either. And all three two-way players had good games today in Long Island.
Orlando won the first meeting in November and second one in January. Tonight’s the season finale between these two teams.
So Cam Thomas didn’t fly with the team to Orlando, and his time in Brooklyn is officially at an end. We’ll have a lot more on the site about Thomas and his first stop in the NBA.
Indeed things for both teams will be drastically different by game time. The Magic made a move to send Tyus Jones out of town to get out of apron jail. The Nets picked up Ochai Agbaji and might be looking to make a few more moves before the buzzer sounds at 3 PM EST. Buckle up, folks. We’re in for a long one.
When you fancy yourself a contender and lose by 36 points to a real contender, you start questioning yourself. Following the loss on Sunday, Jalen Suggs was pretty open about what went wrong and what the team has to do:
“You don’t look at the other team, you look at your own process and what you have got going on. It wasn’t good enough clearly. The things we’re talking about and the places we want to go, they set the standard for it. When you come across a team like that, they are going to check if you are about it for real. It’s tough to lose any night, but losing like that really sucks.”
Yeah, it’s like that sometimes.
What’s killed Orlando this year is the decline in their defensive efficiency. They had been top three in each of the past two seasons, but this year they’ve sunk all the way down to 16th. Orlando hasn’t been able to force as many turnovers this year compared to their better seasons, and when it’s already difficult to score, being unable to get easy buckets in transition makes your life even harder.
The goal for the Nets tonight is to try and keep it within single digits. It’s one thing to lose. It’s another to be wholly uncompetitive for long stretches of time. These games are lessons for the team, but at a certain point you’ve got to put a complete effort together if you want to actually build on these games.
👀 Player to watch: Paolo Banchero
I don’t quite know how to place Paolo. The talent is there and he has the tools to be a top tier star in this league. However, it’s year four and the results just haven’t presented themselves. He’s yet to shoot above 34 percent from three point range across a full season despite attempting threes at a reasonable volume. Paolo is on a max contract extension going forward, and if he isn’t able to break into that top tier of NBA players, then Orlando is in big trouble.
Michael Porter Jr, what do you have in store for us tonight? Assuming the team is shaken up with more trades, they might be shorthanded tonight. If that’s the case, Porter Jr will have to do even more heavy lifting on offense for the Nets. He’s done what he needed to do in Brooklyn, and today represents another opportunity to put his best foot forward.
Salute to Coretta Scott King
- Brooklyn Nets Game Notes – Brooklyn Nets
- Orlando Magic Game Notes – Orlando Magic
