The Brooklyn Nets hosted the Detroit Pistons at Barclays Center on Thursday and lost 130-122. The regular-season series between the two teams is not tied at 1-1.
For the Nets, Kyrie Irving had 40 points and six assists while Nic Claxton had 27 points and 13 rebounds. Edmond Sumner had 24 points and five rebounds.
For the Pistons, Saddiq Bey had 25 points and nine rebounds while Alec Burks had 20 points and five rebounds. Jalen Duren had 17 points and Jaden Ivey had 16 points.
The Nets stayed competitive in this game until the third quarter when the team came out of the halftime break without energy or any urgency. However, throughout the game, Brooklyn was unable to play any defense.
In a game that the Nets were favored to win by about five points, they did not show up to play. After awhile, it was clear that Brooklyn either did not have the energy to play with intensity or they continued to underestimate Detroit until it was too late. Also, Seth Curry missed this game and Ben Simmons and TJ Warren exited this game early with knee injuries.
Here are your Nets player grades:
Not sure what is going on with Simmons, but he did not seem interested in trying to score the basketball at all. His passing was awesome as always, but as long as Kevin Durant is out, Brooklyn needs more offense out of Simmons. Other than his passing, Simmons did not do much else in this game and was a net negative while on the floor. He left this game in the third quarter with left knee soreness.
Irving was unstoppable on the offensive end all night long. He was able to get any shot he wanted against the Pistons and he had a few nice moves driving to the basket as well. His three-ball was falling as well so that made Detroit play him honest. Irving did a good job passing the ball and he was effective on the defensive end as well.
Harris did a decent job of scoring in this game. Detroit made a concerted effort to run Harris off the three-point line and he took advantage by getting a couple of buckets that way. Other than being decent on the glass, Harris did not provide much value in this game outside of his shooting.
O’Neale struggled with his shot in this game. He did not shoot much in this game, but when he did, he was just laying bricks out on the floor. He did have a decent presence on the glass, but he also had a hard time defending some of the Pistons’ guards off the…
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