The Nets found success through an arduous road trip. The next stay-at-home, however, is cast as something less than kind.
After wrapping up their five-game road trip in Oklahoma City on Tuesday, a stretch that also featured pit stops in Houston, Milwaukee, Minnesota and Denver, the Nets now welcome the NBA’s elite to Barclays Center for a stretch. of four games that is sure to test the limits of their newfound No. 1 defense.
The Nets will host the Western Conference No. 3 Sacramento Kings on Thursday; host Nikola Jokic and the No. 1 seed Nuggets West in a Sunday morning game; then welcome Donovan Mitchell and the Eastern Conference’s fourth-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers in back-to-back games.
The Nets just beat the Nuggets in Denver in one of their best games of the season, but the Nuggets think they’ve been caught sleeping. Expect that team to make a statement in Brooklyn.
Then the streak continues on the road in Miami against a Heat team that may have turned the corner by sneaking into the No. 7 seed in the East, followed by a trip to Orlando hours later for the second straight aa game against a Team Magic long, athletic and agile.
The Nets came out of the All-Star break with the seventh toughest remaining NBA schedule in all of basketball. They lost their first four games out of the break, then won five games of six trying before Tuesday’s matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
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That makes Brooklyn 5-5 through the first 10 games of one of the 10 toughest schedules in the NBA. As of right now, the Nets have the 12th-lightest schedule, though their upcoming six-game skid is such a tough list of games for any team to face.
The Nets have a number of reasons to be motivated to secure as many wins as possible, chief among them their playoff hold in a conference with three underperforming teams that entered the season with deep run aspirations in the playoffs.
The No. 7 Heat, No. 8 Atlanta Hawks and No. 10 Chicago Bulls have all disappointed given the star power on their respective rosters, and you can add the No. 11 Washington Wizards as a perennial contender for No. 7 disappointment. anus. . Each of those teams invested in star power; however, every one of those teams, minus the embarrassing Wizards, would find themselves in sudden-death Tournament Gate territory if the playoffs began today.
The playoffs don’t.
Every Eastern Conference team entered Tuesday with at least 12 games remaining on the schedule. The Heat, for example, trail the Nets by three games in the standings and have played two more games than the Nets so far this season.
However, they have the fifth-lightest schedule in all of basketball, their stars (Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro) are healthy and the Heat entered Tuesday winning four of their last six games.
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Trae Young’s Hawks have 13 games left on the schedule and have the 13th strongest remaining schedule, in other words: a relatively average slate, and they’ve also underperformed given Young’s star power, the addition of Dejounte Murray and the ability to three and D on his versatile roster. They also fired head coach Nate McMillan midseason and replaced him with Quin Snyder, who made the Utah Jazz perennial contenders around Mitchell, providing more evidence that Atlanta is home to a team capable of making a run at the top. end of the season.
The Bulls are less of a threat with the eighth-strongest remaining schedule in all of basketball, but with five games under .500 and 7.5 games behind the Nets in the standings, the level of desperation in the Windy City has to be high. With DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic on the court, Chicago is not a team anyone wants on the wrong night, especially in a winner-take-all play-in tournament game.
Another reason the Nets need to come off the good side of their next six-game skid? It could be the difference between seeing Joel Embiid in the first round of the playoffs and seeing Mitchell.
Brooklyn entered a virtual tie with the Knicks for the No. 5 seed Tuesday, and the two teams are tied 2-2 in their season series, meaning the tiebreaker would come down to the division record. The Knicks are 8-8 in the Atlantic Division and the Nets are 7-8 with their last division game coming April 9 in Brooklyn in the season finale against Embiid and the 76ers.
And if the Nets finish with a more favorable record than the Knicks in their latest postseason sprint, they can evade the No. 3 76ers, who are 3 1/2 games ahead of the Cleveland Cavaliers, a much more favorable scenario. first-round opponent if the Nets hold the No. 5 East seed.
If they don’t, the best-case scenario is a date with Embiid, and the worst-case scenario: With the growing Heat, there’s no guarantee the Nets will keep No. 6, which means every game counts. here on out if the Nets want to remain a playoff team this season.
That starts with an upcoming stretch at Barclays Center, hosting Sacramento, Denver and Spida Mitchell twice, before a trip to Miami to face a motivated Heat team in the first leg of a straight game soon after.
