The Brooklyn Nets lost again against the Cleveland Cavaliers, once again led by Collin Sexton, who scored 25 points on Friday night in front of the Nets. This was the second game of their brand-new Big 3 and they couldn’t get past the Cavs, raising a lot of eyebrows among his fans.
Steve Nash knows this is not an easy job but the Nets need to be more aggressive on the defensive end of the ball. They don’t seem to know how to stop anybody and that is a big problem for them. After the game was over, Nash broke down what they need to do to improve their level and finally become the powerful team they’re expected to be.
“We’re not a defensive roster, we have to take more pride and we have to win more 50-50s, contest more shots, fight, scrap, claw. And that’s what I think is missing as much as anything schematic that we’re breaking down,” the former two-time NBA MVP said of the Nets, per The New York Post’s Brian Lewis.
As they did earlier this week, they couldn’t stop Collin Sexton and now there are plenty of concerns about their defensive level. It doesn’t look like they’re going to change their style of play in the near future but that’s not how you win championships. Something must change for the Nets or they will have a hard time against the rest of the contenders in the Eastern Conference. After the game, Kyrie Irving and James Harden also reacted.
Irving explained the Nets need to take their time to put every piece together and find chemistry given all the changes they lived in the past couple of weeks. Kyrie knows this will take time and not everything will be happy and they have to learn from these defeats (0:55).
Harden, on the other hand, explained that they need to make “little tweaks” in order to improve their defense while still trying to figure out some things on the offensive end of the ball. The 2018 MVP believes this is a work in progress, just like Kyrie, and the Nets will eventually get when they need and want to be (1:37).
In two games with their Big 3 together, they haven’t had luck. They need to step up on D and try harder; otherwise, they will be an easy rival for teams like the Sixers, Celtics, and Bucks.
