NBA teams typically do not return home at any point in the middle of an extended road trip. But with two days off following Sunday’s 120-101 defeat of the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Nets decided to call an audible and caught a flight back to Brooklyn, where they held practice on Tuesday.
“Yeah, it is unusual to break up a road trip like this,” interim head coach Kevin Ollie said. “But I think we got with our players early on in the season and they prefer to do it like this, so we’re going to obey their wishes on this one. It was just probably good for them to get home and spend some time with their families, spend some time with their pets, whatever they do on an off [day] just to get away from basketball a little bit and enjoy that back home in Brooklyn.”
But was Tuesday’s pit stop in Brooklyn completely a player’s decision?
“That’s what I heard,” Ollie said. “I wasn’t in those meetings… But it could be false.”
Either way, the team understood the value of a chance to practice on familiar rims before traveling back into enemy territory.
“Definitely,” Dennis Smith Jr. said. “Come home, practice, everybody gets the rest in their own bed, yesterday was a day off, which was necessary. We came and had a really good film session. Everybody was locked in on the court. So, we’re trending toward the right direction in terms of getting ready for the road trip.”
The Nets, who improved to 26-39 with Sunday’s gutsy win, will face the Orlando Magic on Wednesday. Brooklyn suffered a 27-point loss when it last played inside Kia Center on Feb. 27, a game where it finished with a season-low in points (81) and turned the ball over 22 times. Magic All-Star forward Paolo Banchero was sidelined because of illness that night.
“Last game we kind of got punked,” Nic Claxton said. “They just played with a lot more energy than us. If you’re not playing with energy in the NBA, you’re not going to win games, so we definitely have out and have our energy right, focus on the gameplan.”
The Cavaliers were without Donovan Mitchell, Max Strus, Evan Mobley and Dean Wade on Sunday, but Brooklyn still deserves credit for its overwhelming energy at both ends of the court — especially in the second half. The Nets wound up outscoring Cleveland 68-50 over the final two quarters, shot 53.2% for the game and made 18 3-pointers — led by Cam Thomas and Mikal Bridges — in one of their more impressive offensive performances of the season.
“Even in Cleveland when they made some shots, our rotations were right, we didn’t hang our heads when they did make shots,” Ollie said. “And that’s what I want them to do, fall in love with the process of getting better each and every day, not worrying about a playoff spot or anything like that. We’re worried about getting better every day and I thought we did that in Cleveland.”
But we’ve seen this movie before. The biggest challenge for the Nets entering Wednesday’s game in Orlando will be establishing continuity and continuing to build on the momentum they create for themselves. That has been the challenge all season long. And it has to get it right at some point, if it wants its season to extend beyond April 14.
The Nets are 3.5 games behind the Atlanta Hawks for 10th place in the Eastern Conference standings entering Tuesday’s games. A spot in the NBA’s Play-In Tournament is still within reach.
“Cleveland is missing a lot of players right now, so I think it’d be better if we can come out and have a showing like that against a team like Orlando,” Claxton said. “You just really got to have short-term memory. And we know what we’re capable of doing, especially, like I said, when we’re making shots. But we just got to have our energy consistent no matter what’s going on.”
