Again, there are things to build on. Brooklyn’s Less-Marketed Frontcourt had an excellent performance on offense and on the glass. A couple of Nets wing players showed some skills. There are reasons to believe that this loss looks much worse in the box score, due to a late collapse, than it should have.

But the team is wholly bereft of perimeter defense at this point, save a rookie who spent most of the game on the bench. The Hawks’ quick guard combo of Dennis Schröder and Jeff Teague diced up Brooklyn’s attempts to hold them back, and the Nets’ interior defense isn’t quick enough to solve all those problems alone. Al Horford is still an excellent talent that the Nets can’t really handle if the Hawks can find him in so many different open spots. Justin Holiday and Tiago Splitter provided some surprise defense off the bench. Even without Kyle Korver, there’s enough players on the Hawks to fill the gaps.

The result of this Nets-Hawks matchup isn’t any different than most of the times these teams matched up last year. The Nets are trying to develop, but there are players from top to bottom on this Hawks team that have already developed, and that makes all the difference.