Nets booed as they fall to 1-5 in 125-116 loss to Pacers – Reading Eagle

The two teams played basketball at the Barclays Center on Saturday. Let’s call them Team A and Team B.

The A’s have the third largest payroll in the NBA and a roster with two likely Hall of Famers leading the team. The B’s have the second-cheapest payroll in the NBA, three players to watch from the sidelines, and a roster full of mostly young, developing prospects.

Team A must win the game against Team B, and it does not have to be a contest. In fact, Las Vegas made the A’s an 11-point favorite.

Still, that’s the state of affairs for the Brooklyn Nets, who have lost four straight games and dropped to 1-5 after an embarrassing 125-116 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Saturday, a loss highlighted by Hall of Famer Kevin Durant. vote — slammed the scorer’s table in frustration with four minutes left in the fourth quarter at the very moment he, like many in the crowd, realized his team wasn’t going to win.

A roster with Durant and Kyrie Irving, capable shooters and playmakers, should blow the lid off most opponents, especially opponents like the Pacers, who aren’t contending for a championship and may not even qualify for the Play-In Tournament.

Instead, the Nets look like the team is headed for another Play-In appearance, only this time they don’t have a laundry list of excuses to justify their lackluster play. Only this time, the Nets have gone through a full training camp with their mostly healthy roster, and they continue to struggle.

The first losses could be justified. The New Orleans Pelicans have established themselves as the dark horse in the Western Conference NBA Finals. The Memphis Grizzlies took the league by storm last season, the Milwaukee Bucks are perennial contenders, and Luka Doncic could be the NBA’s MVP this season. He had a 40-point triple-double to beat the Nets in overtime.

The Nets were supposed to beat the Indiana Pacers on Saturday. It was as close to a must-win early in the season as you can get.

But the same problems that plagued the Nets during their first four losses of the season doomed them to collapse in the fifth. The defense was stout, the Nets out-rebounded more (52-35) than they lost, and Ben Simmons continues to hold his own offensively.

The game plan against the Nets is clear: if you can put a shoulder on a player, you can likely get through him, and if you can get through him, there isn’t a true powerhouse on the roster to protect the rim. Too often, the defense had to help from the weak side, making the Nets susceptible to corner threes.

It happened again and again, with the Pacers making 23 three-pointers, setting the all-time record for most three-pointers against the Nets in franchise history.

Some of those threes were flukes — namely Tyrese Haliburton, Buddy Hield and rookie Benedict Maturin stepping up the court and shooting during the contest. Many of them, however, were not.

The Nets defense is in bad shape.

And yes, it seems, both the team and the fan base. Some Nets fans started booing the team when Indiana’s lowly lineup built a double-digit lead. Other fans booed the Nets as they left their beautiful “classic” court.

The Nets have another shot at the game they love because the A’s and B’s play again on Halloween.

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