The Brooklyn Nets have reached the part of the season where their games fade before the final buzzer. You sit through it. You register the score. And then, after a few days, it’s gone. By this summer, you probably won’t even remember you watched it. There’s no reason for it to linger in your memory.
It’s especially easy for contests to fade away in your subconscious when you play a team two times in a row, right at the beginning of the home stretch in a lost season. That’s exactly what the Nets dealt
with tonight. They played their first game in their last baseball-esq series of the season against the Miami Heat. It came and went like a passing breeze.
Most teams will match up well against this inexperienced, rebuilding Brooklyn squad, but the Heat felt like a unit built to torment them coming into this one. No team has played at a greater pace than Miami this season. The Nets, with the youngest roster in the league, naturally prefer to play at a school-zone speed limit.
As expected, the Heat got their way early. The jumped out to 7-0 start and stayed up by six into the second half. They earned seven points on the break and baked seven Brooklyn turnovers into four extra points.
Despite their limited impact, Brooklyn’s early efforts were admirable. The Nets were mainstays on the offensive glass with Day’Ron Sharpe (of course), Ziaire Williams, and Ben Saraf.
That said, Danny Wolf was once again the star amongst the reverse this evening. After a career game vs the Cavaliers on Sunday, he flashed his complete offensive arsenal in the first, throwing an alley-oop to Day’Ron Sharpe at one point and hitting a three the next. He even finished over the 7’0” Kel’el Ware at one point, putting up a 7/1/1 line in the frame while shooting 3-3 from the field.
Miami got its lead up to 10, a game-high at the time, roughly halfway through the second. While the Nets gave their opponent a taste of their own medicine with five early fast break points, the Heat played a clean seven minutes of ball to open the period. Brooklyn also went roughly four minutes down the stretch of the frame without a made field goal.
While we know these Nets are accustomed to cold stretches like that, the Heat defense deserves all the credit. They were relentless fighting around screens and their length quickly clogged lanes through the paint. Consequently, the Nets went into the break down 69-54 but here’s a Nolan Traoré highlight for your viewing pleasure…
Traoré led the Nets at halftime with 12 points while shooting 4-9 from the 2-2 from deep. That’s a spot usually occupied by Michael Porter Jr., yet his inconsistent shooting swung in the wrong direction tonight. Through two, he had just seven points while shooting 2-9 from the field and 0-5 from deep.
Things didn’t get any better for him or the Nets once play resumed. Porter Jr. started the second half with four quick shots, and even though the last one was high quality, Fernández subbed him out for Williams at the 9:33 mark of the third period. A 7-4 start to it also pushed the Miami lead up to a game-high 18 points.
However, and once again, the B-side of Brooklyn’s rotational record had all the hits in the second half. The bench scored 14 of the Nets’ 21 points in the period, with six coming from Williams despite a 1-5 scoring stretch. Sharpe got into double figures with four in the period while Wolf added another pair of assists.
While Williams, who as mentioned came in a bit earlier than everyone, finished the period as a +1, while Wolf, Saraf, Sharpe, and Josh Minott broke even.
That group might’ve made it game, had Tyler Herro, Simone Fontecchio, and Davion Mitchell not mixed in a flurry of threes down the stretch of the frame. Alas, Miami remained up 15+ heading into the fourth, and from there, the Nets only continued to stumble, all the way into their ninth straight loss.
Miami kept poking and pushing the ball down the other way, eventually snagging 20 points off 19 Brooklyn turnovers. They slowly but surely, they stacked points like a tired bricklayer while the clock ran down. The Nets also shot just 18.8% from deep, which ranks as their third worst mark in a contest this year.
Grant Nelson did get some run in garbage time, though his minutes were more like those of a recent G-League graduate this time around. That being said, the rook did finish with three points, all of which came at the free throw line. Noah Clowney led all Nets with 17 points while shooting 4-8 from the field, 1-4 from three, and 8-9 from the charity stripe. Ziaire Williams finished right behind him with 16 points, also getting the bulk of his points via an 8-9 performance at the line.
Brooklyn’s rookies were less efficient. Traore added 14 points and splashed two threes on four attempts, but also turned it over six times without any assists to counter things out. Saraf managed four dimes, but also had six turnovers.
Again, at least it’ll be an easy one to forget.
Final: Miami Heat 124, Brooklyn Nets 98
Milestone Watch
- With his second block of the night against Miami, Nic Claxton (599 career blocks) has tied Mike Gminski for the fourth-most rejections in franchise history.
Injury Update
While Dëmin technically sat with “injury management” tonight, Jordi Fernández made it seem like this is a situation where there’s actually something bugging him rather than one where the team is just taking a precaution.
“Right now, he’s not good to go,” he said. “We’ll see what the next step is. It’s important that we manage them. As rookies, they come in, and usually when they do a lot of draft workouts their summer is not perfect because they go through a lot. It’s almost like they’re missing a summer. They do play summer league, but it’s not a real summer. Then you get into training camp, and it feels like you go into playing right away. You see it sometimes; a lot of people talk about the rookie wall. Mentally and physically, there’s a lot of things that still we got to do better to help them overcome the adversity of how and different the NBA schedule is. It’s important that we do what’s best for his body and moving forward for him.”
We’ll continue to provide updates as we hear more about Dëmin’s health status. For what it’s worth, he did travel with the team to Miami.
Next Up
Let’s run it back. The Nets will play the Miami Heat once again on Thursday evening, also at Kaseya Center. After this one, the Nets will have just 20 games left in the 2025-26 campaign. The game tips off at 7:30 p.m EST.
