On Friday night, the new-look Brooklyn Nets had an evening not only this current team won’t forget, but one that will go down in franchise lore for all the wrong reasons.
The Brooklyn Nets were one of the biggest stories at this year’s NBA trade deadline. While other teams improved their chances of going far in the playoffs, Brooklyn broke down their roster when they traded off disgruntled stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant.
The two deals made the Dallas Mavericks and Phoenix Suns serious contenders in the Western Conference and turned the Nets into a franchise in a pseudo rebuild.
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However, in the deals, the team did get some talented players back in Cam Johnson, Mikal Bridges, and Spencer Dinwiddie. Since the deal, the team has faired better than expected and hasn’t plummeted down the standings or our NBA power rankings. The team actually sits in the fifth spot of the conference and has split their last 10.
Unfortunately, Friday night was a worst-case-scenario performance for head coach Jacque Vaughn and his Brooklyn Nets squad.
Brooklyn Nets post-franchise-record 29-point first-half against Chicago Bulls
On Friday night, the Nets took their show on the road to Chicago and faced a disappointing Bulls team that is 26-33 and a sad two games out of the final spot in the NBA Play-In tournament. This should have been one of the rare games on the schedule where Brooklyn was a strong favorite to post a victory. The opposite happened during the first half.
After a sad 18-point showing in the first half, the Nets said “hold my drink” and only managed 11 points in the second quarter. The 29 points they managed after 24 minutes set a new record for the fewest points over the first two-quarters of an NBA game in franchise history.
Things were looking even grimmer after they only scored eight points after half of the third quarter. However, they seemed to get their act together and finished with 22 for the quarter. Unfortunately, their defense was as just bad as their offense on the night, and early in the fourth quarter, the Brooklyn Nets were down a whopping 40 points (103-63) at one moment during the laugher loss.
The Nets will be back in action on Sunday afternoon with a 3 PM ET matchup against the Atlanta Hawks.