Nets set to have 3-game winning streak tested as team heads into Milwaukee
Nets fans couldn’t have scripted a three-game stretch better than this.
Brooklyn’s victory over the Houston Rockets on Tuesday made it three in a row for a team seeking chemistry and continuity during their end of the season playoff push.
The winning streak includes a 28-point come-from-behind victory over the No. 2 seed Boston Celtics, and a convincing victory over the same Charlotte Hornets team that ended the Knicks’ nine-game winning streak without star guard LaMelo Ball.
And now comes a dose of reality: The Houston Rockets own the worst record in all of basketball and are the first team to reach 50 losses this season. They will be the worst team in the NBA for the third straight season if they finish the year at their current pace.
The Hornets might as well be in the same boat without Ball. Their victory over the Knicks was their first since the star guard suffered a season-ending ankle injury. The Nets easily disposed of the Hornets and held them to under 90 points.
There’s no doubt the victory over the Celtics was convincing — even if Boston took its foot off the gas up big in the first half.
Can the Nets recreate that success for the remaining four games on their road trip?
It won’t be easy.
That’s because Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks are up next, and Antetokounmpo just dunked all over the Nets for 33 points and 15 rebounds in the Bucks’ double-digit victory at Barclays Center on Feb. 28.
The Nets have undoubtedly started to find their identity on both ends of the floor — but it takes more than a realization of self to stop Antetokounmpo, who may be the league’s most valuable player, even if voters are tired of casting ballots in his favor.
The Nets then travel to Minnesota to take on the Timberwolves, who are quietly creeping up the Western Conference standings and are just a half-game behind both the Dallas Mavericks and Golden State Warriors for the fifth and sixth seeds that insulate a team from having to participate in the sudden-death Play-In Tournament.
The Timberwolves, however, have largely been a one-man show with Karl-Anthony Towns now sidelined 100 days with a severe calf injury. The Nets, however, will be playing in the second game of a back-to-back, and Anthony Edwards — who is averaging about 25 points, six rebounds and five assists per game — is a handful at all three levels offensively.
The Nets round out their road trip with a test: traveling to Denver to play in the high altitude against the presumptive three-time MVP in Nikola Jokic. The Nuggets own the best record in the Western Conference and are favorites to emerge as title contenders.
The Nets finish their road trip in Oklahoma City, taking on star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is averaging 31.7 points per game as one of the NBA’s promising future faces of the league.
All the while, the Nets are jostling with other teams in the Eastern Conference for playoff positioning. As of Wednesday afternoon, the Nets and Knicks were tied in the loss column, with the Knicks owning two more wins on the season. The Nets stand sixth in the East and are 2.5 games ahead of the seventh-seeded Miami Heat. They are five games ahead the eighth seed, meaning it would take a five-game losing streak — plus a five-game winning streak from the Atlanta Hawks — for the Nets to risk falling down to eighth.
A losing streak isn’t off the table. The Nets have the ninth strongest remaining schedule in all of basketball and must play a number of legitimate title contenders in the 17 games left in the regular season.
If they’ve proven anything all season, however, it’s that Brooklyn has some backbone. The Nets won’t go down without a fight, and that should be enough to secure a playoff spot this season — though the idea of a championship in Brooklyn has long left the borough.
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