Nets’ Kevin Ollie stresses lack of defense in blowout loss at Raptors
The Brooklyn Nets are moving forward with the rest of their season hoping to turn things around enough to be able to make it into the Eastern Conference play-in tournament. Brooklyn’s decision-makers decided that Jacque Vaughn was no longer suited to help the franchise achieve that goal so Kevin Ollie is now the interim head coach with his work cut out for him.
The Nets began their playoff push after the All-Star break by visiting the Toronto Raptors on Thursday on the back of a new coach calling the shots and hopefully, renewed hope. However, Thursday’s game at the Raptors seemingly reminded everyone who have watched the Nets this season that some big problems still remain.
Brooklyn lost at Toronto 121-93 despite the fact that the Raptors have a worse record than the Nets and Toronto was only favored by one to two points before the game tipped off. After a few minutes passed by, it became clear that Brooklyn still has work to do in terms of implementing the new tweaks in their overall gameplan.
Two of the main issues that prevented the Nets from being competitive against the Raptors was the lack of transition defense, along with a lack of overall defense, and the lack of presence in the rebounding aspect of the game. After the disappointing loss, Ollie addressed the defensive part of their gameplan that was sorely lacking:
“We started off with the third quarter executing, playing good defense, getting out on the break, making some shots and when our shots don’t go in, we can’t stop playing defense. I think that was a transition point for them (the Raptors), getting out in transition, so we got to make sure that we understand that we got to get stops. If the ball’s not going in, we got to get back and you know coral, show bodies, but they were just getting layups and we can’t have that happen.”
