The Brooklyn Nets sulked back to the visitors\u2019 locker room after a historic, 54-point loss to the New York Knicks on Wednesday night. Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez headed to a brief postgame presser, where he fell on the sword in his typically monotone style. Did the head coach really believe he was \u201cresponsible\u201d for the ass-kicking, that halfway through the season \u201cplayers are not responsible for it, so I got to make sure that they understand the values that we have,\u201d or was it just something to say?<\/p>\n
Players did not tear the visiting locker room apart. Rookie Drake Powell mentioned that a couple veterans spoke a sentence or two, but it was not exactly a scene out of Remember the Titans. Guys got dressed leisurely, sat on their phones, and chatted \u2014 maybe slightly softer, a little more somber, than normal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I don\u2019t know if I said much directly after,\u201d said Michael Porter Jr. Friday. \u201cWe all were kind of a little \u2014 obviously just had our feelings about the game. But later that night, I texted the guys and just told them like, \u2018yo, that\u2019s my fault. I\u2019ve got to come in with that energy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
To Porter Jr. and the Nets, Wednesday was not a shameful chapter in a rivalry matchup or a devastating blow to team morale. It was a bad day at work.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the time leading up to the game,\u201d explained MPJ at Friday\u2019s shootaround. \u201cIt\u2019s the day off, how you spent your day off in between games, how much sleep you got. All those things play a part to how your body, your nervous system, your mind feels when it\u2019s tip-off time. And I felt like those two days were a little shaky for me in terms of preparation, and that\u2019s what separates the good players and the average players from the great players, that time in between.\u201d<\/p>\n
Playing 82 games in 170 days does not provide much time for reflection, only for routine. Nic Claxton finally used the E-word on Friday morning, but he wasn\u2019t stewing over the loss: \u201cI\u2019m in the present now. We focused on tonight, we know we got to be a better team tonight, because that\u2019s not gonna happen again. t\u2019s unacceptable. Obviously, it was embarrassing. We\u2019ll be ready to go tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nets fans seeking more public atonement from their leaders were out of luck. But Porter and Claxton veterans that they\u2019ve had to be despite being 27 and 26, didn\u2019t have to grovel; instead, they gave the Boston Celtics (missing Derrick White) one hell of a game on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Now, there were embarrassing moments in this one too. Barclays Center was filled Celtics fans cheering their hearts out and serenading Jaylen Brown with unmistakable \u201cM-V-P\u201d chants far louder than any \u201cBroooooook-lyyyyyn\u201d chants begun by the PA announcer. I felt particularly bad for two die-hard Nets fans in front of press row, about to triumph over the sea of green they were engulfed in before their favorite team defended a last-second sideline-out-of-bounds play befitting of their 12-31 record\u2026<\/p>\n
Still, Claxton and Porter fulfilled their promise. Though MPJ\u2019s impact wavered as the game went on, he indeed brought the right energy out of the gate, cutting hard and crashing the glass. Noah Eagle called him \u201cspry\u201d on the YES Network broadcast. Claxton capably guarding Jaylen Brown in isolation was crucial to Brooklyn\u2019s defensive gameplan, and Brown ultimately shot 9-of-27.<\/p>\n
Postgame, Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez said he was \u201cproud of the brand of basketball we played, the competitiveness. We got better today, and that\u2019s most important.\u201d<\/p>\n
MPJ respectfully disagreed: \u201cWe lost. That\u2019s all I really care about. I don\u2019t care about no fight, personally. Obviously it was a better performance collectively than last game, but we still lost. So it was a game we should have won. We\u2019ve lost too many games this year that come down to the wire like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brooklyn improved their performance tenfold from Wednesday to Friday. Alas, it was Friday\u2019s loss that bothered Brooklyn\u2019s veterans more\u2026<\/p>\n
Claxton was still muttering to himself about the loss in the locker room postgame. Wednesday\u2019s loss might have elucidated the effect that organizational tanking has on its players \u2014 and why you try to keep their duration short. But Friday\u2019s loss showed that players are wholly divorced from that strategy. While clearly an optimal development for Brooklyn\u2019s long-term prospects, especially with the New Orleans Pelicans and Indiana Pacers picking up wins on the same night, this one stung.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe played a really good game,\u201d said Clax. \u201cI feel like we deserved to win. We just didn\u2019t execute enough down the stretch, so we got to learn from it. But this is a tough loss though. This one really hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the trade deadline 12 days away, both Claxton and Porter Jr. are sure to have a go bag packed at all times. But neither of them seem too concerned about the possibility of being traded.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems like it\u2019s the same thing every year, whether it\u2019s — I mean, it\u2019s a part of the business,\u201d said Clax. \u201cYou see certain teammates, certain names in trade rumors or whatever, but you just got to be where your feet are and be a professional. It\u2019s clich\u00e9, but it is what it is. It\u2019s our job to come out here and perform whenever we put on a Brooklyn Nets uniform.\u201d<\/p>\n
MPJ. agreed: \u201cHonestly, I\u2019m just going with the flow. Whatever happens, happens. It\u2019s out of my control. So, I\u2019ve voiced already that I\u2019m enjoying my time here, and I\u2019m enjoying getting to grow with these guys and the day-to-day process with these guys. But everything else, I just try to let it be what it\u2019s going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brooklyn\u2019s two highest-paid players have been pushed into early vet-status as a result of being on the NBA\u2019s youngest team. This week, they were right for the part, easily shrugging a historic loss and trade rumors off their shoulders before leading one of Brooklyn\u2019s most competitive games in 2026.<\/p>\n
The Nets are 12-31, the worst team either player has been on \u2014 for MPJ, by a long shot. Now, they get to escape a brutal snowstorm in the Northeast by starting a five-game road trip in sunny Los Angeles. Once again, the task will be to rebound from a brutal loss; is it the same as rebounding from an outright embarrassment?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d says Porter \u201cIt\u2019s different. You learn from them in different ways. Obviously what happened at MSG the other night is unacceptable and there\u2019s unlimited things to learn from. But tonight there\u2019s very specific things, late-game situations. So you can learn something from any game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nic Claxton simply sighed: \u201cIt\u2019s so many games when you play an 82-game season. So, you really just can\u2019t get too high, you can\u2019t get too low. You get beat by 50, you got to be ready to respond. If you lose a tough game like this, you just kind of just got to be even-keeled through everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
While that is certainly a clich\u00e9d sentiment, the Nets just covered the entire bandwidth of defeat in three days, from Wednesday\u2019s embarrassment to Friday\u2019s gut-punch. In a losing season that promises to continue down this path, that clich\u00e9 is a damn useful one. Perhaps for fans as well as players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brooklyn Nets sulked back to the visitors\u2019 locker room after a historic, 54-point loss to the New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,11879,9,24,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-110856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","10":"tag-brooklyn-news","11":"tag-nets-features","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}