The Brooklyn Nets, currently 5-13, are near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings. They are doing all that they can to distance themselves from the abysmal Philadelphia 76ers, who finally won a regular season game, their first since March, beating the last place Western Conference Los Angeles Lakers, who’ve become so irrelevant that Kobe Bryant’s retirement announcement this past weekend has been the only thing to make the Lakers interesting.
If Brooklyn, who notched their fourth win against the Detroit Pistons and their fifth against the Phoenix Suns, both home court wins, could count “moral victories” to further distance themselves the same way ties are credited in football and hockey, they’d be a two in that column. One for their overtime win against the Golden State Warriors a few weeks back and one for Saturday’s against the Cleveland Cavaliers, which went down to the wire, requiring a take-charge move by LeBron James to register a Brooklyn loss. Unfortunately, there’s no dedicated “M” or “MV” column in NBA standings. Only ones for wins and losses.
“It’s really interesting how the league is,” said Lionel Hollins, Brooklyn’s head coach. “Last night we played great and we lost,” he said, referring to the Cleveland game.
“Tonight we were very inconsistent, and we had maybe an eight or nine minute stretch of playing well, and we come away with a win,” said Hollins, referring to their defeat of Detroit, Brooklyn’s fourth win.
His patience with his team’s early struggles to win games is slowly paying off, most notably with second-year bench guard Shane Larkin.
“I’m playing with confidence every single game,” said Larkin, whose 11 points and 8 assists off the bench were integral in Tuesday’s win.
“Just going out there playing my game,” he said. “Coach is talking to me every single day, just telling me to keep doing what I’m doing, and what he sees that I’m not doing as well, what he wants me to do more of.It’s just a process. You have to keep building on it every single game, good or bad.”
