The Nets were down Deron Williams for the first game of the season and Brook Lopez for the eighth straight, so it was hard to figure out where the offense might come from for a team ranked in the bottom of the league for offensive efficiency.
So naturally, they hit their first six shots, shot a scorching 55 percent from the field in the first half, and dominated the fourth quarter thanks to playmaking by unheralded backup Darius Morris and some sound shooting.
Then, after a hot opening to the fourth quarter, they nearly gave it all away, due to some shoddy interior defense, careless turnovers, a wide-open Brandon Jennings three-pointer off a well-executed Pistons inbounds play, and some other weird outside shotmaking by the Pistons, eventually staving off their own near-collapse.
The Pistons are awful. Like, really awful. Like, you think the Nets are bad but the Pistons make the Nets actually look like the Spurs awful. They are, at best, a confusing mishmash of shooters who can’t shoot, creators who can’t create, and bigs who rely on creators to create and shooters to space the floor. The Nets probably should’ve done away with them sooner than they did.
But at least they did away with them at all.
