Brooklyn Nets stifled, frustrated by Washington Wizards in 107-99 loss

For all the good vibes Brooklyn has produced lately, Monday evening was anything but.

The Brooklyn Nets had a chance to snag, momentarily, the final Play-In Tournament spot on Monday evening, 57 games into a season that was supposed to be an indestructible tank.

The half-dead, 12-seed Philadelphia 76ers, Brooklyn’s most recent victim, would need to defeat the 10-seed Chicago Bulls at home, while the Nets traveled to Washington to take on the league’s worst team.

Surely, the Nets wouldn’t take the Wizards lightly. After all, the only blemish on their defense during this excellent month-long run is a 119-102 loss to the Wizards at home, after which Jordi Fernández was highly critical of his team.

“We didn’t defend the whole game … For the whole game our focus was bad. I think our guys tried to do the right things, [but] we were not on time. Our purpose, focus, everything we’ve had going well for us the last three games, not the last three games just before we won, but even before, I just couldn’t see it today. We got to be better, starting with me.”

Since that game, the Nets had been better, ripping off a 4-1 stretch heading into the rematch on Monday, inserting themselves into the thick of the Play-In race.

So it was stunning to see them start so poorly, down 21-7 after just a few minutes, prompting Fernández to make a hockey-style line change. Five on, five off…

It worked.

Brooklyn picked up their energy thanks to reserves like Tyrese Martin, Trendon Watford, and Day’Ron Sharpe; Fernández’s message clearly resonated with the starting group.

The first five re-entered to begin the second, and cut what was once a 14-point deficit down to four. It looked like a return to normalcy, with Brooklyn the hotter and, frankly, better team entering play. They were favored for a reason, and scored 39 points in the second quarter to prove it.

And yet, they still trailed 67-59 at the half. While Brooklyn’s defense has earned all the praise it’s gotten in February, they’ve benefitted from excruciatingly poor 3-point shooting form their opponents. Not the Wizards, though, who shot a blistering 10-of-16 from three in the first half.

Blame the Nets for letting Jordan Poole and Bilal Coulibaly get into a rhythm, chalk it up to bad luck, but whatever it was, it nullified Brooklyn’s offense showing more signs of life…

The second half was much less surprising. It was the game we expected from the Nets and Wizards, not just entering Monday night, but at the outset of the season. Two offensively inept rosters played offensively inept basketball, but that favored the road team.

Jordi Fernández’s team forced a staggering 15 turnovers in the second half, and their subsequent transition attacks were the only time their offense looked competent…

Ziaire Williams led the way with 19 points on the night, making a career high five 3-pointers as the biggest beneficiary of Washington’s sloppy play.

Cam Johnson trailed him with 17 points, but unlike he had in Philly, could not get much going for his teammates. In a season where Johnson has taken a bigger offensive leap than most ever thought possible for him, Washington applied the correct level of physicality. They exchanged some off-ball fouls for the opportunity to make him uncomfortable all night long, eliminating any space he had off dribble-handoffs or curls, as Brooklyn’s half-court offense stalled out.

They did the same to Trendon Watford at the point-of-attack; Brooklyn’s backup ball-handler did put up 11/7/3, but turned it over four times and spent a few other possessions wasting away the shot clock.

Though the defense finally arrived in the second half, Brooklyn’s subpar offense preventing them from building anything more than a seven-point lead, which would prove too small to maintain

The Wizards outscored them by a pitiful 22-12 margin in the fourth quarter, a period in which the Nets turned it over six times and made only three baskets. It makes you wonder how this team, given the lack of offensive talent on the floor most nights, has managed to ruin a tank and find themselves in a Play-In race.

“We were not able to have good enough offense in the fourth quarter to win the game. And that was obvious, right? 12 points in the fourth, you don’t give yourself a chance,” said Jordi Fernández.

“They were getting into our bodies and we could not execute properly, and that’s on me, and I have to help the guys be better. So we’ll work and we’ll just be better next game.”

However, the Nets have often been the team bringing the fight to their opponent; that was not the case on Monday. Behind a rejuvenated Marcus Smart and Khris Middleton, two veterans that have unexpectedly found themselves on a rebuilding team, the Wizards punked the Nets down the stretch. There were plenty of mini-skirmishes and reviews for hostile acts in the second half of this one, and each stoppage of play only gave the Wizards life and drained it out of Brooklyn…

Said Fernández, “We lost our composure and we were not good. Whatever happened with a flagrant [Claxton] and a technical [Watford] and a foul before the ball gets inbounded [Williams], all those things are a lack of focus, and that’s not the team we want to be.”

So, Jordan Poole closed out the Nets with an array of step-back jumpers, reaching 26 points, and they lost a game they didn’t deserve to win, despite facing the league’s worst team.

If Brooklyn is going to overachieve this season, they might as well really over-achieve. Easier said than done, but what’s the point of knocking on the Play-In’s door just to lose to the Washington Wizards twice in one month?

But maybe the fact that a loss can even be frustrating at all marks a success for the 2024-2025 Brooklyn Nets. For any 21-36 team, it can tough to find the bright spots.

Final Score: Washington Wizards 107, Brooklyn Nets 99

Milestone Watch

• The 39 points Brooklyn scored in the second quarter mark their most in a second quarter this season
• As mentioned, Ziaire Williams made five 3-pointers, a career-high
• Brooklyn recorded 16 steals against the Wizards, a season-high

Suspension incoming

Nic Claxton received a flagrant 1 for this foul, which I wasn’t so sure about…

Still, despite its appearance as a regular old push-in-the-back, Claxton was whistled for a flagrant 1. That marked his sixth flagrant foul “point” of the season (one point for an F1, two for an F2), which will trigger an automatic, one-game suspension.

Brooklyn’s only hope that their starting center avoids a suspension is that the flagrant foul gets overturned by the league office.

Standings Watch

As it turns out, Brooklyn couldn’t have climbed into the East’s 10-seed anyway. That’s because the Chicago Bulls handed Philly a real butt-whooping, winning by 32 points to move to 23-35.

The Nets fall to 21-36, 1.5 games behind Chicago for the final Play-In spot, as the lifeless 76ers remain the 12-seed at 20-37. With both the 76ers and Nets losing, there was no change in lottery odds. Nets remain in seventh, a game behind the Sixers.

Next Up

Photo by David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images

The Brooklyn Nets return to Barclays Center for two games, the first of which will be against the Western-Conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday night.

• Boxscore: Washington Wizards 107, Brooklyn Nets 99 – NBA
• Game Highlights: Washington Wizards 107, Brooklyn Nets 99 (Video) – NBA
• The Nets fall to the Wizards, 107-99 (Video) – Nancy Newman – YES Network
• Jordi Fernández on effort in loss to Wizards (Video) – YES Network
• Poole scores 26 as the Wizards snap their 6-game losing streak with a 107-99 victory over the Nets – Noah Trister – AP
• Jordan Poole guides Wizards to skid-ending win over Nets – Reuters
• Nets cooled off by NBA-worst Wizards after blowing late lead – Brian Lewis – New York Post
• Nets doomed by slow start, rough finish in 107-99 loss to Wizards – C.J. Holmes – New York Daily News