SALT LAKE CITY — The Nets’ finishes are strong. But their starts are all wrong.
Their struggles early in games have been a problem all season, and have bit them in the derrière on this five-game Western swing, ending Monday at Utah.
If there’s one hard lesson the Nets have learned on this trek, that’s the one.
“At the beginning of the game we just weren’t locked into details as far as the scouting report was concerned,” said coach Jacque Vaughn, an all-too-familiar lament on a gauntlet that’s already hit Sacramento, Phoenix, Denver and Golden State and produced three losses.
“These are all teams, they put their roster together to fend for a championship, so for us to come out west and see where we are as a team and see where we need to grow at — what things that we can do really well on a nightly basis and the things we need to work on — you want to learn those lessons while you’re winning.
“So that’s going to be the challenge for us to go to Utah and get a win. That was my message to those guys: Take this lesson that we can’t dig ourselves a hole in the first half and think we’re going to fight back and be in a position to win the game especially on the road. So we can’t do that in Utah.”
Brooklyn (13-12) couldn’t do it in Golden State, spotting the Warriors an 18-point cushion and seeing its rally fall short in a 124-120 loss on Saturday night.
“Just battle from the beginning. Play together, defense and offense and just go out there and get a win. Think, just got to be just locked-in at all times. And you know, just got to be better off the jump,” said Mikal Bridges, who missed a potential tying layup against the Warriors with 24 seconds left. “We’ve just got to start the game off good. That’s pretty much it. We fought being down, so we could take away always fighting to compete to the end.
“But we’ve just got to start off the game better, just keep us in the game in the beginning, second quarter, so it won’t be like that in the third, fourth where we’ve got to battle.”
The slow start was on both ends.
The Nets allowed 10-for-17 shooting from deep in the first half.
“Just getting stops; that’s really it. Just find ways to get stops early, so we can stay in the game,” Bridges said.
“It wasn’t necessarily anything that they were doing. I take a lot of accountability for that,” center Nic Claxton said. “The scout was for me to be up and put pressure on the ball. … I wasn’t as aggressive as I should’ve been from the jump. And I’m the catalyst for the defense so I definitely take accountability for that.
“I can just look myself in the mirror and do that. From the jump I just wasn’t as aggressive as I needed to be, especially on the defensive side. And when you’re on the road especially, and you’ve got a lot of different things going against you, you’ve really got to be locked in from the jump.”
All too often they aren’t.
The Nets’ second-half Net Rating entering Sunday was fourth-best in the league (plus-6.1), their first-half mark was just 19th (minus-2.4).
They had actually gotten a rare hot start against the Suns, and cruised in the debut of Kevin Durant’s new Big 3.
But the Nets trailed by 11 in the first quarter at Sacramento, and 15 in the second.
They were down by seven in Denver after one, and by as much as 16 during the second.
“We didn’t come up with [intensity] in the first half, came a little sluggish, a little slow. Some bad turnovers, turned the ball over a lot; but the third quarter we turned it around,” Cam Thomas said of Saturday’s loss. “Got to watch this, look at the film and get ready for Utah and try to get a win there.”