Brooklyn Nets lose back-and-forth battle to Los Angeles Lakers, 102-101

Hey, that was pretty fun, all the way down to D’Angelo Russell’s attempted heroics. Even if — or especially because — it didn’t end with a W.

The Brooklyn Nets were not going to play the same game in Los Angeles twice. Not after losing by fifty-nine points to the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday, “one of those days that, you know, you don’t do anything right,” in the words of Head Coach Jordi Fernández.

A loss like that was inevitable for the Nets, though a 59-point margin seems excessive. Still, Brooklyn was once again playing without half their roster (the good half), on the second night of a back-to-back after flying in from Portland. All that adversity finally caught up to them, and the offense died a painful death.

While Brooklyn caught flack from a national audience that justifiably hasn’t watched them much this season, the epic loss — 10th-biggest in NBA history — was pretty uncommon for Fernández’s team, even with half of his rotation being two-way players and sophomores.

Over the first half of the season, Brooklyn has earned the reputation of a team that plays hard, occasionally gets hot from three, and can stay in a game with anybody so long as they’re not totally decimated by injuries.

And while the injury situation wasn’t perfect on Friday against the Los Angeles Lakers — Cam Johnson, in addition to the regulars, was out with that ankle sprain — it was better. Ben Simmons and D’Angelo Russell, taking on his former team, were both available.

The scales were further balanced when Anthony Davis was ruled out with an injury. Dorian Finney-Smith also missed the chance to play against his former teammates, due to the the birth of his son.

Indeed, Brooklyn played hard for 48 minutes against an unimpressive L.A. side. LeBron James (29 points) and Austin Reaves (career-high 38 points) did their best create a talent gap, hitting some absurd jumpers all night long, but there really wasn’t one.

The Lakers could have used any of the ten Nets who hit the floor on Friday night, including Simmons, who threw down three dunks en route to 6/5/7, making enough plays to inject Brooklyn’s offense with life…

While the Lakers built an 11-point lead in the first half, Brooklyn’s defense and 3-point shooting meant this was never headed for blowout territory. Noah Clowney, Ziaire Williams, and Jalen Wilson each made three 3-pointers, as Brooklyn shot a sweltering 17/38 (44.7%) from deep.

“I think it was a matter of us taking care of the basketball,” said Fernández. “I think we had, if I’m not wrong, over 10 turnovers in the first half … five turnovers in the second half. This is the reason why we came back. We shot 12 threes in the first half, we’re shooting 41%, and then in the second half, we shot 26, and that’s why we gave ourselves a chance. We kept shooting the right ones.”

While it did take until the second half for Brooklyn’s shooting to fully arrive, the defense was there from the beginning. Nic Claxton’s seven points and eight rebounds don’t jump off the stat-sheet, but his energy, his force down low did a 180 from Wednesday night. He blocked two shots but contested many more, and that helped kick-start Brooklyn’s transition offense…

The Nets won Claxton’s minutes by a dozen points.

With contributions across the board, Brooklyn needed was a leader to stay in the fight. They found one in the former Laker on their roster.

D’Angelo Russell would put up 19/6/8 on 7-of-15 shooting on Friday, finding the right level of aggression on offense. He got the ball out of his hands quickly in transition, but still led Brooklyn in scoring by looking for his own in the half-court.

But he needed one more swish to match the fourth-quarter heroics of LeBron James and Reaves. With the shot-clock turned off, Russell walked the ball up the floor as every butt in Crypto.com Arena left its seat. The two-time ex-Laker was gonna shoot the shot, no question about it. He missed…

Not a great final possession for the Nets, but one that was wholly inevitable.

Postgame, Jordi Fernández drew attention to what he viewed as a foul on Noah Clowney’s rebound attempt, and backed Russell’s decision: “He had 19 points, 5-for-10 from three, and he just made a couple. So I’m gonna let these guys with experience take the shot, and that was a shot I’ve seen him make a lot of times.”

Tosan Evbuomwan, Brooklyn’s second leading scorer with 15 points, echoed the sentiment: “Oh yeah, we live with that for sure. That’s a great look for us. I think it goes in on another day, 100%.”

On a night when the Charlotte Hornets and New Orleans Pelicans won, important results vis-a-vis the NBA Draft Lottery, Russell’s moon-ball attempt revealed our inner-feelings as it hung in the air. How bad did we want this for him? How bad did we want another loss?

Answer: It doesn’t matter.

Clang. Nets lose.

Final Score: Los Angeles Lakers 102, Brooklyn Nets 101

Milestone Watch

Before we get to the Brooklyn side, LeBron James set yet another record, long before he threw down this alley-oop dunk in the fourth quarter…

In the first half, King James became the all-time leading scorer against the Nets franchise, passing none other than Michael Jordan. Following his 12-of-17 shooting night, Bron has now scored 1,725 points against the Nets in his career.

As for the Nets…

• Tosan Evbuomwan has now hit double-digit scoring in five of his last six games.
• Ziaire Williams (15/4/3) has hit double figures in seven of his last eight games.

Injury Report

Cam Johnson was initially questionable to play Friday’s game against the purple-and-gold, but was ultimately ruled out after re-spraining his right ankle in Tuesday’s win against the Portland Trail Blazers.

He’ll likely be ruled as questionable before Brooklyn’s next contest, but Jordi Fernández didn’t have much more of an update than that in postgame: “It’s too early right now. He’s doing a great job with, you know, trying to get healthy and working every day and being around with the group, and that’s what we value the most: his energy, his voice right now.”

Next Up

Photo by Joshua Gateley/Getty Images

Uh-oh. The Nets finish up their six-game road trip with a date against the NBA’s best team, a team shaping up to be one of the greatest regular-season teams of all-time. They’ll tip-off against the 34-7 Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday evening at 7:00 p.m. ET.