Here are three thoughts on the Nets' 99-90 loss to the Wizards Saturday night in Brooklyn:
1. Fans may not want to admit it, but the Nets miss Deron Williams.
Despite the constant complaining from the fanbase about Williams – for many the symbol of everything that's fallen short of expectations for this team since the move to Brooklyn, and particularly this season – when he's been on the court this season the Nets have been significantly better than their opponents, and when he's been off of it they've been worse.
That trend has carried over to the past eight games (I'm not counting him as having played a significant role in the three-plus minutes he played against the Celtics before having to leave the game last week), in which the Nets have gone 1-7 and continued to struggle shooting from the perimeter.
While Jarrett Jack has played fairly well since Williams went down, whenever he's had to sit things have fallen apart because of the play of third string point guard Darius Morris.
In the 101 minutes Morris has played in the last eight games, the Nets have been outscored by 21 points per 100 possessions with him on the court, and are only being outscored by 2.7 points per 100 possessions when he's on the bench.
Combine that with the team's ongoing struggles from the 3-point line (more on that in a minute) – where Williams is leading the team by shooting 39 percent from behind the arc – and its clear that getting him back on the court would go a long way towards solving many of the problems that have hurt them during this current 1-8 stretch over their last nine games.
The problem for the Nets is that with Williams not being evaluated until Wednesday, and having still not returned to basketball activities, it seems very unlikely he'll return during the team's three-game West Coast swing next week, meaning it'll likely be at least 11 games that he'll have almost completely sat out, at minimum, before he could return to the court.
2. Speaking of the 3-point shooting, the Nets once again struggled from deep in this one, shooting 4-for-17 (23.5 percent) and are now shooting 25.8 percent from 3-point range during their current 1-8 slide over the last nine games.
The bottom line is the Nets simply have to get better shooting from the guys they counted on to hit shots from deep coming into the season – namely Mirza Teletovic and Bojan Bogdanovic.
The two of them combined to go 2-for-6 Saturday night, and are now shooting 14-for-41 and 2-for-15, respectively, from 3-point range over the last nine games. Until Williams gets back, the Nets need all the shooting they can get from both of them.
3. This was another example of both how Mason Plumlee and Brook Lopez have adjusted to their 1-2 combo at center, but also how limited it leaves Nets coach Lionel Hollins because of his understandably hesitancy to play them together.
Because that combination hasn't worked this season, he's almost exclusively played them by themselves on the court, something that continued against the Wizards, when they only saw a couple minutes of court time together.
And with both Lopez (15 points, five rebounds in 26 minutes) and Plumlee (11 points, three rebounds, two steals in 24 minutes) playing well, it means that at least one productive player won't be getting as much time as he should be. This means either Hollins will have to try that two-big lineup again, or he'll have to try and figure out the right balance of playing each of them. Either way it's a tricky spot for him to be in, and one that bears monitoring moving forward.
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