This time, the Net took a far more direct route to a loss.
Continuing their first legitimate road trip of the season, the Nets looked like weary travelers tonight in Dallas. Brooklyn playing this one as the second half of a back-to-back couldn’t have helped either.
Danny Wolf got the start once again with Egor Dëmin, who’s still out with a bone bruise in his right leg. But even with a seven-footer technically in their backcourt, Dallas looked like the bigger team early on. The Nets missed an abundance
of attempts around the rim and saw three of their shots get rejected in the game’s first four minutes.
The Mavs nearly double Brooklyn up on the glass as well, beating them there in the first 13-7. However, they did triple them in paint scoring, adding 18 points inside to Brooklyn’s six.
Keon Ellis returned to the rotation after not logging any minutes yesterday vs Atlanta. Still expected to a spark plug kind of player for the Nets this year, Ellis’ reappearance didn’t give the Nets any juice, but nobody else outside of Michael Porte Jr. could either.
Brooklyn began the game 4-14 from the field. Kyrie Irving had as many field goals through the 3:21 mark of the first, adding nine points on 4-7 shooting in the opening period. Then, after Porter Jr. got free in transition for a few triples, everything else started to fall for him as well. He scored 11 points in the period’s final 2:51 and 15 in the quarter, just beating out Cooper Flagg, who had 14 in the period. That kept us out of blowout territory, with the Nets down 33-26 entering the second.
No, that’s what the second quarter was for. The Mavericks stared it with an extended 21-6 run in the period’s first five minutes, quickly hurling the Nets into a 22-point hole. After a turnaround jumper from Kyrie in with 4:06 to go in the quarter, it got as deep as 26 points.
Positives? Nolan Traoré continued to look like a confident, true point guard, navigating around the Dallas defense, directing traffic, and picking the right shooting spots. Turnovers, which were a major problem in the fumbled game vs the Hawks, weren’t as abundant. The Nets even won that battle in the first half, forcing Dallas into 12 and only committing eight themselves.
Still, Brooklyn posted .385/.287 going into the break, while the Mavericks maintained .619/.400 slashes. No silver linings or improvements around the margins could cover that up. The Mavs led at half 66-46. By that point, Cooper Flagg had 20 points, seven assists, and four rebounds on just 10 shots. Brooklyn’s only man in double figures was Porter Jr: who had 16 points with seven boards on 3-7 downtown shooting.
If you expected the Nets to take that first-half embarrassment personally and respond accordingly, you were mistaken. By the 4:20 mark of the third, Dallas had gotten up by 30.
Things got borderline mortifying when Noah Clowney fouled out of the game with 2:23 to go in the third after shoving Morez Johnson Jr. in the chest away from the ball. They gotten into it earlier in the quarter too, where officials tagged Johnson Jr. with a technical foul after he knocked down Clowney on a box out. This time, however, Clowney was charged as guilty. He picked up the six fouls to disqualify himself in just eight minutes or burn…
Meanwhile, the Mavericks were out there just having fun. With two seconds left to go in the period, Naji Marshal connected with Kyrie with a beautiful cross-court dime to set him up and-one…
Dallas also opened the fourth with a Cooper Flagg three after Wolf went under a screen for him, which extended their lead to a game-high 32 points. Shortly after, Drake Powell and Josh Minott came in, giving us something fresh to watch, even if necessarily not fun.
Minott did hit two “Chris Paul hits a huge three to cut the lead to down…” shots on back-to-back possessions on near the quarter’s mid point. Leveraging the defense’s newfound awareness of his shooting, he attacked a closeout and got up for a jam a few minutes later as well. He finished the game with 10 points, two steals, and two rebounds while shooting 4-10 from the field and 2-8 from deep.
Powell got through the defense for a rushed, but made floater that came back down and in after bouncing high off the back iron, but produced little outside of that.
With Brooklyn still down 25+, Dallas gave Jett Howard, son of Nets assistant coach Juwan Howard, some run as well. In front of his pops, he added
That was cool. Everything else that happened on the court tonight was not. The Nets ended up losing by a whopping 37 points, where nobody on the team put up more than 20 points.
Final: Dallas Mavericks 130, Brooklyn Nets 93
Next Up
Brooklyn’s road trip continues with a Wednesday evening game in New Orleans vs the Pelicans. The Pels are 4-5 at the time of writing. The Nets split their series against them last year. This one tips off at 8:00 p.m. EST.
