Nets look to hold onto playoff positioning against Bulls on Friday night
The Brooklyn Nets need to kick things into high gear and Friday night's matchup with the Chicago Bulls could be just what the doctored ordered.
The Nets are 20-26, one-game back in the loss column of the seventh seeded Orlando Magic and three games ahead of the ninth seeded Bulls.
A win on Friday would help create more of a buffer between the Nets and their next closest challengers, Chicago, but more importantly would help reestablish a winning culture that has been missing for much of the month of January.
The Nets have posted a 4-10 record so far in 2020 and played some lackluster basketball on both sides of the ball. Even Kyrie Irving's return, which originally was supposed to give the team a boost, hasn't improved the overall team's performance.
Head coach Kenny Atkinson was forced to remove Spencer Dinwiddie from the starting lineup in order to find the right combination of players to shake the team out of its rut.
While Dinwiddie was playing at an All-Star level in Irving's absence, he's been relegated to bench duties and fallen out of the All-Star conversation. The Nets supersub recently changed his number from 8 to 26 in order to honor the late Kobe Bryant.
The Bulls, on the otherhand, have posted a 6-9 record so far in the month of January. Guard Zach LaVine is leading the charge for Chicago with 25.1 points per game, 4.9 rebounds and 4.0 assists.
Brooklyn will need to find answers for the dynamic guard and wants to shake out of the 5-14 stretch over the last 19 games. It will be fascinating to see if Atkinson can effectively put Dinwiddie and Irving on the floor at the same time and whether or not Caris LeVert can regain the form he showed prior to his injury earlier in the year.
