Brooklyn Nets lose radioactive eyesore to Utah Jazz, 105-94

Turnovers and missed threes. So many turnovers and missed threes. A good old-fashioned, ugly loss.

Another real opportunity to win a basketball awaited the Brooklyn Nets on Saturday evening, when they returned home to Barclays Center, fresh off a gutty, come-from-behind victory against the Toronto Raptors on Thursday evening.

Following the Dennis Schröder trade, a blowout on their own floor and a whole lot of chatter about the state of the franchise, Thursday’s victory was more in line with what Head Coach Jordi Fernández has established in his first year in Brooklyn. Despite a rare rough shooting night, the Nets scrapped, executed, and veterans that may not be long for the borough led them to victory.

Brooklyn would be without one of them on Saturday, as Dorian Finney-Smith was unavailable with a left calf contusion. But that opportunity to win still awaited the Nets; they were playing the 6-20 Utah Jazz, who have lived out some Nets fans’ dreams through two months. You know, shamelessly tanking.

Maybe Sean Marks had acted too late and not forcefully enough with last week’s trade of Schröder. The Nets seemed likely to notch their 13th win of the season on Saturday — despite the absence of DFS — especially if they got repeat performances from a suddenly-aggressive Ben Simmons and career-best Cam Johnson.

Indeed, Simmons was aggressive yet again vs. Utah. Not only did he hit his first jumper of the season…

…but drove the ball strong all night long. He’d shoot 5-of-11 from the field and 5-of-6 from the line (his most FTAs in a game since the infamous 2021 playoffs) en route to a 15/10/6 line.

Said Fernández: “He works every day, and we trust that the shot’s going to go in, and that’s pretty simple … He’s got to keep being aggressive, because now if he’s comfortable in those areas, getting to the free throw line and getting to the rim and finishing and then finding his teammates, all of a sudden, you have a weapon that can help. You know, it’s not one dimensional.”

It wasn’t always pretty, but Simmons consistently tried stuff, like a dunk attempt off a half-court drive! (He got stuffed by the rim.) The real problem was his six turnovers.

Simmons wasn’t alone there, though, as the Jazz looked anything but lifeless in torturing Brooklyn. Finney-Smith’s absence meant Brooklyn was down even more shooting than usual, as Fernández slotted Noah Clowney into the starting lineup after his strong, 37-minute performance in Toronto.

The offense looked predictably clunky, especially as the Jazz trapped Cam Johnson at every opportunity. Some garbage-time points made his stat-line of 18/3/5 on 7-of-15 shooting look respectable, but he was flustered all night long, finally overburdened by Brooklyn’s need to thrust him into a primary role…

Johnson tossed six turnovers, and nearly all of them were of the live-ball variety. After an eye-bleeding start to the night — look at the score in the above clip — Utah found a rhythm by pushing pace, ultimately scoring 23 points off 19 Brooklyn turnovers. They showed more defensive pressure and attention to Johnson than any team has all season (maybe others should take not) and bet on themselves to rotate off Brooklyn’s middling shooters. They won big.

“I think that six turnovers to five assists, it’s not good enough,” said Fernández. “And I think the intentions were good, I think he was throwing the pass to the short-roll, it was just like, the execution was not good. So I thought for the most part, he knew what we’re supposed to do. He’s just never been in that position.”

Oh, and the Nets shot 7-of-40 from three. That’s 17.5%. Keon Johnson was 0-of-9. (That’s zero percent.) A packed Barclays Center crowd, another announced sellout, tried to get their energy up for the Saturday night showdown between two subpar teams, but the home team gave them nothing to work with.

After the first quarter-and-a-half, Utah did. If you missed Saturday’s second half, here’s an even shorter version of this recap…

It’s not that the Nets didn’t try. Nic Claxton rebounded nicely from his ejection in Toronto; his ten points and five boards don’t jump off the page, and he missed some bunnies, but he was a consistent force inside in the first half. He protected the rim more fiercely than his two blocks would suggest, but ultimately, Johnson either couldn’t get him the ball in the short-roll, or Clax didn’t make quick decisions when he got it.

Clowney was fine in his second start of the season. He remembered he is 6’9”, and threw down two big dunks, even grabbing three offensive boards, but he didn’t hit a three until the score was out of hand in the fourth quarter, and was generally invisible outside of those big dunks.

“Controlling the control-ables, and we didn’t do that,” responded Fernández when asked why his team lost hold. Simple.

This loss wasn’t about the rebuild, the tank, whatever. This past week has beaten those talks into the ground for Brooklyn. Rather, they lost to the Utah Jazz on Saturday night for the same reason the game was tough to watch: They played terribly. Simple as.

Final Score: Utah Jazz 105, Brooklyn Nets 94

Milestone Watch

• Ben Simmons’ 15 points and ten assists mark his first double-double of the season, and the eighth of his Nets career. (Whether points/rebounds or points/assists)
• He has also scored in double-digits in three consecutive games for the first time since November 2022 (just after Brooklyn fired Steve Nash, for reference) when he did it in six consecutive games, including two 20-point outings. Remember that?
• Nic Claxton’s first block of the game gave him 460 in his career, moving past Sam Bowie for sole possession of eighth on the all-time franchise list. Chris Dudley is next up with 465, then Chris Morris with 467.
• Jordi Fernandez won another challenge. He now leads the league in number of challenges (31) and number of successful challenges (21.)

Injury Report

Not much of one.

“Cam [Thomas] will be re-evaluated this weekend, so we still — we haven’t done it yet. So once we get it done, we’ll let you guys know,” said Jordi Fernández pregame. Though we are now past the original three-week timeline for an update on Thomas, the return of Brooklyn’s leading scorer may not be imminent.

As for Dorian Finney-Smith’s left calf contusion, Fernández termed it merely precautionary: “He played through it [in Toronto]. and obviously this is a precaution. We don’t want to take any risk with the discomfort and everything, so yeah, he’ll be out.”

Claxton fined $25K

The NBA has set a precedent; once upon a time, the league fined then-Celtic Kyrie Irving $25,000 for firing a ball into the stands after a petty dispute with Jamal Murray, who had taken a shot at the very end of a decided game in a brazen attempt to reach 50 points.

“The ball deserved to go into the stands after some bull**** like that,” said Irving. Fun times.

Anyway, while Nic Claxton’s ball-toss on Thursday came under different circumstances — namely, earning him an in-game ejection with 8:46 left in the second quarter — but the result was the same: A $25,000 fine.

VC Bobblehead

The Nets announced that the first 10,000 fans at the Nets January 25 Vince Carter jersey retirement will receive a VC bobblehead.

Vince gave it his stamp of approval…

The Nets play the Heat that night.

Next Up

Photo by Issac Baldizon/NBAE via Getty Images

Some warm weather a couple days before Christmas. The Nets will travel to face the Miami Heat on Monday evening, with tip-off set for 7:30 p.m. ET.

• Boxscore: Utah Jazz 105, Brooklyn Nets 94 – NBA
• Game Highlights: Utah Jazz 105, Brooklyn Nets 94 (Video) – NBA
• Jordi Fernández post game press conference (Video) – YES Network
• Lauri Markkanen scores 21 points to lead Jazz to 105-94 win over Nets – AP
• Jazz dump Nets for first two-game win streak of season – Larry Fleisher – Reuters
• Nets can’t overcome woeful 3-point shooting in sloppy loss to Jazz – Peter Botte – New York Post
• Nets unable to find rhythm in 105-94 loss to Jazz – C.J. Holmes – New York Daily News