3 Takeaways as Brooklyn Nets give the New York Knicks a good run for their money

The Garden, er, Barclays Center was fairly quiet tonight, perhaps because the Knick fans who showed up thinking it’d be a blowout. Not so fast.

The New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets are never on the same page. Despite calling the same province home, these cross-town operations never seem to prosper at the same time. Ironically, the last two times they flipped spots, they did so at the other’s expense.

Tonight, it was supposed to be Brooklyn’s turn to be the punching bag, perhaps more than it ever has been. Their turn to get called little brother and actually deserve it.

But as Serena Williams or LaMelo Ball (at least outside of the studio) might tell you, the younger, more frail sibling doesn’t always stay that way. Sometimes they grow up to make everyone forget who used to smoke them on the blacktop year after year — it just takes a handful of years.

That day, however, was not today for the Brooklyn Nets, not with their Bridges stamped draft picks yet to convey nor the fifth youngest active roster in the league. They sure gave New York a run, but in the end, nothing more than that. It was another loss for the good guys, this time by a 99-95 margin. Here’s what we learned.

Day’Ron Starting to Play Like a it’s a Contract Year

Despite being selected just a handful of minutes apart after him, everyone seems to have forgotten it’s a contract year for Day’Ron Sharpe as well as Cam Thomas (and fellow RFA Ziaire Williams.) With each 2021 draftee’s deal set to expire after this season, all three players are scheduled to enter restricted free agency this summer.

When you have a dynamic, score-from-anywhere guard and a back-to-the-basket big whose best attribute is rebounding, the former will likely get more attention than the latter. That’s just the nature of how today’s game is consumed.

Nonetheless, it’s been Sharpe who’s had the larger spotlight on him of late with Thomas playing only two games between late November and now. That stretch has been a mixed bag collectively, but he’s performed well under it of late.

Sharpe was particularly impressive tonight with his rim protection. Brooklyn did him, Claxton, or anyone else defending behind the point of attack no favors tonight by blitzing on almost every high screen. That forced their other defenders to react fast, often a man behind, as the Knicks whipped the ball around once passing out of the doubles.

It wasn’t a perfect night by any means, as the Knicks still finished with a whopping 56 points in the paint, but Sharpe handled it all about as well as you could expect in his 13 minutes.

Sharpe also blocked a shot in what might have been the play of the night considering the narratives coming into this game. He’s now rejected a shot in three of his last four games for the first time all season.

“I’m very happy with what Day’Ron did,” said Fernández postgame. “You see it right there. Not that plus/minus being a lot, but you know, it’s 10 points and his energy and everything. So I’m very happy with his performance.”

Sharpe will need to take this at least one, probably two steps further in order to make Brooklyn really sweat if they want to retain him this offseason. But incremental, developmental wins are all we’re after right now, so we’ll take it.

Nets Paying for their Inconsistencies at the Point

Playing point guard for the Nets is just like playing James Bond — and for all the wrong reasons. Either due to injuries or the limited options they already have at the position, Jordi Fernández has re-casted the ball-handler role for the Nets at an unprecedented rate in the past month and a half.

It’s nobody’s fault other than the front office’s, but as Sean Marks made clear last week, there are bigger things at play right now than putting out the best lineup each night. Let’s not go any further than that.

But for whatever Brooklyn’s buying in the future, they’re paying for it right now, particularly on the offensive end. Since dishing Dennis Schröder to Golden State, only the Utah Jazz have averaged more turnovers per contest in the NBA than the Nets. Brooklyn also ranks second in opponent points surrendered off turnovers in that time frame. Tonight, they had 16 leading to 22 orange and blue points.

Giving up possessions and then points to the other team is no bueno. That’s basketball 101. But the Nets are also struggling to generate flow on offense, particularly with the pick-and-roll. The latter one actually went in, but twice tonight, Nic Claxton and D’Angelo Russell seemed to miscommunicate on a screen-to-alley-oop situation.

While Brooklyn’s offense isn’t designed to live-and-die by Nic Claxton pick-and-rolls (thank god), it’s just one of the many “feel” issues we see plaguing Brooklyn’s offense right now. The flip-flop between spamming dribble-hand-offs on Ben Simmons days and Russell’s P&Rs is likely making it difficult for ancillary players to find their rhythm night in and night out.

Brooklyn did find somewhat of a groove down the stretch of the fourth, largely thanks to Russell, as they laid siege to New York’s lead, but still posted woeful .372/.300 splits for the game. The offense is still hurting and it’s starting at the top.

Injuries, Trades, Tank Talk, the Nets Still Fight On

A Nets team on neutral, such as the one we saw prior to Jacque Vaughn’s dismissal last year, would have taken tonight on the chin and gone on their merry way. But if I’ve had anything to take away from this season now dancing past its halfway point, it’s that Jordi Fernández is no JV.

From the first day of his tenure, Fernández inserted the words “fight” and “grit” into almost every sentence he could. It could’ve been that and nothing more — all talk. But it wasn’t, at least not early, as the Nets stole games against Western teams with rosters twice as expensive as theirs before dancing with the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers until the clock struck midnight.

But although the Nets sure as hell fought harder than anyone expected them to in this season’s early stages, the team seemed to lose some pep in its step over the past month. Trading away key veterans, particularly vocal ones, and enduring a handful of blowouts will do that to you.

But while the papers tomorrow will tell the story of a New York Knicks win, the return of that fight and grit should be a subsection. It came just in time to give the national TV guys something nice to say about the Nets after not watching them all season — and more importantly — in time to make Knick fans silent at the Clays, even if just for a few minutes.

The clearest indicator of this was obviously the scoreboard, which showed the Nets in the lead as late as the 2:35 mark of the fourth quarter. Teams trying to win championships and those “not always in line with winning the next game or putting the most talent out there” are not supposed to go toe-to-toe with each other, but did anyway.

In terms of specifics, Brooklyn looked more engaged at the defensive end compared to what we’ve seen. The team finally getting a competitive environment to play in surely had something to do with that, but their closeouts were crisp and their ball-pressure tight from start to finish.

“I think that it speaks of the identity of the team, that competitiveness, resiliency, and I’m happy to see that,” Fernández said of the team’s effort tonight. “Sometimes the other team in the NBA, with a schedule, the other team may be better than you, you don’t make shots, they make shots, but as long as you come back and fight, try to do the right thing, you play hard, but do it with purpose. I think our purpose and focus today was right there.”

D’Angelo Russell, yes, our 6’3” D’Angelo Russell who’s only had six blocks coming into tonight, had three this evening vs the Knicks, tying a career-high. That just doesn’t happen without some extra juice, whether brought on by a rivalry or some pushback against getting kicked in the teeth.

As a result, Brooklyn held the league’s second-best offense to 99 points tonight, tied for their third-lowest scoring output in a game this year.

The Nets don’t want “we almost beat them” to be something they shoot for forever, especially against their pals across the river. One way or another it won’t be. How long that will take us seems to be everyone’s favorite question this year, and there won’t be an answer revealed anytime soon.

What we do know, however, is that whenever it does happen, Brooklyn has the foundation to build upward on. This time around, let’s try our best to not kick it out the door and watch it end up in Cleveland a few years down the line.