For the second straight season, the Nets have been swept out of the playoffs, with the final loss on their home floor. But this one felt different.
The Kevin Durant-Kyrie Irving team that took it on the chin from the Celtics last season was better, and should’ve performed better. The rebooted version this season, after Durant and Irving were traded away, raises the very worrying and very real question: Is that all there is?
Even facing a 76ers team playing without the injured Joel Embiid, the Nets suffered a 96-88 Game 4 defeat that just underscored the same problems they had shown in the first three losses, and since this team got assembled:
Shot creation and rebounding.
It doesn’t matter how much they scrap and claw on defense — and they did both in leading Philadelphia 48-40 at the half — if they can’t close out those stops or get create good looks on the other end, they won’t win in the playoffs.
“So, 40 points, we gave ourselves a chance. Now we couldn’t [shoot] the basketball, that’s the other side of it,” coach Jacque Vaughn said. “And then the piece of it that keeps staring us in the face, we got to grab on to it.
“We’ve got to get bigger over the summer. We’ve got to get nasty over the summer. We’ve got to get guys who really love hitting, and take it personal when the other team gets a rebound. That’s what we’ll be looking for.”
The Nets couldn’t buy a jumper, going 9-for-37 from 3-point range — and just 5-for-29 after a first quarter in which they took a 29-22 lead. But the lack of shot creation came back to haunt them, as it likely will against any engaged playoff-quality defense until they find some more downhill players.
“For our group going forward, the ability for multiple people to get downhill and get to the paint and create opportunities, that’s a need for us, yes,” Vaughn said.
Right now, Spencer Dinwiddie is the Nets’ only downhill threat, with Mikal Bridges starting to learn to take advantage of his newfound gravity to create. But Bridges was visibly worn down by his workload of carrying the offense for the first time and being tasked with playing stopper on defense.
That’s not enough for postseason success. And the Nets know it.
“My grandmother said that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, so I don’t know if anybody’s in here for moral victories,” Dinwiddie said. “But we go into the offseason now. We’re gonna have meetings [Sunday] and see what else unfolds. We’re a team that’s in a lot of transition and we’ll see what happens next.”
Right after the Durant and Irving trades in February that brought back Bridges, Dinwiddie, Cam Johnson and Dorian Finney-Smith, vultures were circling looking for bargains. Nets general manager Sean Marks rejected offers of four first-round picks for Bridges, two for Finney-Smith and calls for Dinwiddie as well.
But Marks is going to have to be active this summer, either through trades or free agency, to add rebounding and downhill threats. The Nets got battered 54-38 on the glass by a team without Embiid (backup Paul Reed had a game-high 15 rebounds), and their lack of shot creation is a clear and problematic weakness.
Bridges shot just 35.4 percent overall and 13.9 percent from deep in the last five games of the regular season, and went 15-for-43 from the floor combined in Games 3 and 4 versus the 76ers.
Predictably, Bridges — who led the league in minutes played and miles logged — wouldn’t use fatigue for an alibi. But he was gassed, and the Nets had no offense other than isolating him at the top of the key. They screened into switches, but had no clear idea whom to attack and were lured into an isolation mess by the 76ers.
“It was just shot selection, [we’re] not getting easy one sometimes,” Bridges said.
“They did a great job making us just play a little more iso: Credit to them. It’s tough. We haven’t been together that much and just trying to find the spacing and where guys should be. … They made us play just one-on-one ball.”
And they played it without one-on-one players. That’s something Marks will need to address, or his Nets will remain capped at this kind of low ceiling.
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