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The Nets lose again, but what does it mean?

With yesterday's 109-97 loss to the Detroit Pistons, the Brooklyn Nets are now 3-10. Some people consider that doom. I'd give them an incomplete and suggest that many people like sports because it gives them narratives that can turn on a dime.

But the Nets' start also should remind people to do a "civic pride" check. Do Brooklynites feel some diminishment because the Nets have injured players, a rookie coach, and an underachieving team? Will we feel more fulfilled if the Nets turn it around? C'mon.









Wrote Capital New Yorks' Howard Megdal 11/19/13 regarding the play of backup point guard Shaun Livingston:
So for now, these are Shaun Livingston's Nets. They're 3-7, which is only daunting until realizing that the Nets have played 10 of 82 games. For some perspective, they started last season 14-14, mediocre enough to get coach Avery Johnson fired in roughly three times as many contests. They still cruised to a playoff spot.

That only changes should Williams and the other stars fail to get healthy in time to help the Nets this year. But Pierce and Garnett are essentially irreplaceable from the roster. Same with Lopez--I mean, Reggie Evans started at center Monday night.

But Shaun Livingston looked like the starting point guard anyone who saw him years ago assumed he'd be. That also doesn't matter all that much now, when the city is focused on the follies of the Knicks. But it could prove crucial to the effort the Nets make to take over the city next spring.
More somberly, Daily News columnist Filip Bondy wrote last night:
Kidd got so low on Sunday, he gave yet another postgame talk to the players about their miserable third quarter, huddled with team execs and then told the media he might be better off benching his starters for longer stints.
“Should have let ‘em play the whole game,” he said about the reserves who tried so hard in the final period.
Kidd took a backhanded shot at his starters, and then Paul Pierce took one back, saying the Nets aren’t making proper adjustments at halftime.
“Teams aren’t going to play the same in the second half as they do in the first half and we’ve got to realize that,” Pierce said.
...There may be a bottom rockier than this, but it is hard to imagine such a landing place. The Nets lost at home to a terrible-shooting Piston team that really has only effort and bulk on its side.
...The GM didn’t expect that would become an issue, but here we are just a month into a once noble experiment and it’s time to start thinking demolition already. Ultimately, Kidd may take the blame for this, if only because nobody else can be moved, and because the Nets are not responding at all to whatever he is telling them at halftime.

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