Nets’ Seth Curry says ‘we’re a different team’ without Kevin Durant
NEW YORK — Brooklyn Nets guard Seth Curry has stepped up for the Nets all season when the team needed a scoring punch. In Sunday’s 112-102 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, he had 23 points on 9-of-15 shooting from the field and 3-of-8 shooting from three-point land.
“I mean, that’s the way we’ve been playing all year,” Curry said after the disappointing loss. “We’ve been kind of playing iso ball. Rely a lot on Kevin (Durant) and Kyrie (Irving) just to create. One-on-one offense is kind of tough to score on two, three defenders.” With Durant off the floor, most of the Nets’ offense comes down to Irving creating something off the dribble or someone else scoring through the flow of the offense.
However, that strategy has doomed Brooklyn in the fourth quarters of the past two games as both the Celtics and the Thunder adapted their defense to force the Nets to play iso ball with the game on the line. The adjustment that teams are making in the second half is that they’re forcing someone other than Irving to beat them and that forces some players into roles unfamiliar to them.
“So, we got to figure out other ways we’re gonna play with Kevin not out there creating shots for himself and other people. I mean, we’re a different team now. So, we got to figure it out.”
Despite shooting 52% from the floor in the third quarter, Brooklyn shot 35% from the floor in the fourth.
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Player grades: Seth Curry scores 23 in Nets' demoralizing 112-102 loss to the Thunder
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NBA Twitter reacts to Nets' uninspiring 112-102 loss to the Thunder
