It’s hard to say which end of the court was worse for the Nets in their penultimate preseason game: offense or defense.
After the Nets suffered a 127-119 loss to Philadelphia that was nowhere near that close, Nic Claxton tried to think which end has more work to do.
His face took on something halfway between a wan smile and rueful grimace.
“Both,” he said. “I can’t say offense or defense, to be honest. We have a long way to go, for sure.”
On one end, they committed 27 turnovers — eight by Ben Simmons — to hand Philadelphia 35 points.
On the other end, they got outscored 27-14 on second-chance points, surrendering 33 more shots and 17 more free throws.
And on both ends, they got outworked.
“When you play teams like that — which this is great for us — in the course of having preseason games, a physical, aggressive team where you need to be decisive with the ball, you need to take the opportunities when they come and present themselves. We didn’t do that,” coach Jacque Vaughn said. “When you over-dribble, when you overpenetrate, your spacing has to be more detailed against teams like that.
“Boring is OK. If you’re solid against teams like that, then you’ll be able to get to the paint, you’ll be able to get shots just because you combat their aggressiveness by being solid. So, great lesson for us. And they were more aggressive all the way around, whether it was offensive rebounds, whether it was creating the turnovers, the shot discrepancy. So definitely addressed with our team of how hard you need to play in this league.”
Coming into this season, it was the outside shooting and rebounding that concerned the Nets and looked like Achilles’ heels.
On Monday, it was everything else that did them in.
Yes, without Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson, they still hit 17 of 31 from deep.
They stood toe-to-toe on the boards with the Joel Embiid-less 76ers.
But they had more giveaways than Oprah Winfrey in her heyday.
“There’s spurts where we look great. There’s spurts where we look like we don’t know each other,” Simmons said. “That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to figure each other out, and I’m trying to figure out how we’re gonna play, where we need to be, and obviously, now I got to take care of the ball, but I’d rather get turnovers out now than later.”
Simmons looked good physically, and make no mistake: In the preseason where scores don’t matter, his health is priority Nos. 1, 2 and 3.
But he had three quick turnovers to put his Nets in an 18-5 hole against his old team.
With the Nets trailing by 16 early in the fourth quarter, Simmons had just four points and as many turnovers as assists (six).
The Nets were in a 99-83 hole after a Filip Petrusev 3-pointer 16 seconds into the fourth.
Simmons shook off his early funk and sparked a 16-7 run.
Spencer Dinwiddie — who staggered minutes with Simmons — hit a 3, and after Simmons swiped the ball from Paul Reed, he cruised in for a dunk to cut the lead to 106-99 with 7:35 to play.
Armoni Brooks hit a 3-pointer to pull the Nets to within a half-dozen at 110-104 with 4:31 remaining, but that’s as close as it got. He hit another to make it 120-114 with 1:49 to play, but they still couldn’t get over the hump.
“As far as concepts go, we also have to play hard. That’s where it comes from,” Claxton said. “We have to rebound. [Shot discrepancy] was a big margin. And that’s on me; that’s on everybody. We got to play hard.
“So honestly, you can throw out concepts, throw everything out the window, we have to play extremely hard because we’re not going to be the most talented team. We’ll play against teams that have been together longer than us as a group. So that’s where it all starts first is going out and play hard.”
