Nets’ Head Coach Assesses Loss vs. Pistons

On Saturday night, the Brooklyn Nets took on the Detroit Pistons, looking to bounce back from a tough defeat to the Portland Trail Blazers a night earlier.

The prospects of accomplishing this would become slightly more daunting as Cam Thomas was announced to miss out on Saturday night’s action due to injury management as he continues to return from a strained left hamstring, which kept him off the court for nearly two months.

Given the absence of their two star guards, the aforementioned Thomas, and D’Angelo Russell, the Nets would have to look elsewhere for a spark of offensive creativity. Yet, they’d struggle to find any consistency in the first half, with Brooklyn shooting a lackluster 28 percent from the field, only converting on seven of their shots, which left them down, 45-68 at the end of the first half.

Cameron Johnson was one of the bigger names to struggle in the first half, only converting on one of his 12 shots, which yielded him five points.

Unfortunately for Johnson and Brooklyn, their struggles would continue in the second half, which would cause them to fall to the Pistons, 115-94, despite a solid run in the third quarter. Their offensive struggles throughout the match was something that Jordi Fernandez pointed out when he was assessing the Nets’ loss.

”Obviously we struggled to shoot, shot 30 percent from the field and 15 percent from three,” explained Fernandez. “It’s hard to win a basketball game when you shoot like this.”

Brooklyn’s slow night on offense shouldn’t have come as too much of a shock given Detroit’s frenetic defense, which sits right outside the top ten in the league for defensive rating.

However, against such an aggressive team, Brooklyn held their own when it came to controlling possession, only managing to turn the ball over 14 times, which is one below their season average, as well as one below the Pistons’ average of opponent’s turnovers, which Fernandez was pleased with.

”We did okay taking care of the ball against a very aggressive defensive team,” stated the Nets’ head coach.

If there was one silver lining that the Nets’ head coach took from Saturday night, it would be their aggressiveness on the offensive end, forcing 23 turnovers.

”We created 24 points out of 23 turnovers, which tells you we were aggressive in creating turnovers,” said Fernandez.

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