MAVS 99, NETS 102

[mavsluvr]

What´s horrible about it? Three of our five best players, three of our four best scorers, plus two defenders. I assume Luka and Dorian played the full 3rd quarter again, so....

Were you unable to watch it? It was not a pretty sight. I even made a game note of it at the time, before we knew how it was going to turn out. 

I get the lineup on paper, in a vacuum. But I don't know why you would ever even think about using it in these circumstances. Throwing Josh Green, who has hardly had any meaningful minutes in the NBA, on James Harden, at the same time that you're pitting Tim Hardaway against Kevin Durant? Along with an undersized Jalen Brunson and an inexperienced Frank Ntilikina? In a lineup that never plays together, and has two players who don't play much, period? In the fourth quarter, against a great team, including two of the league's most potent assassins?

These guys just weren't up to it. Harden and Durant made mincemeat of these poor guys, scoring on them like they weren't there. This unit gave up an offensive rebound, two threes, a layup, and a pull-up in 2.5 minutes. The Nets scored on 4 of 5 possessions. The Mavs on one. I think it was foreseeable. Dorian did play the whole third quarter, but Luka didn't. It was the last couple of minutes of his rest period. 

The only things I can think of are (1) maybe Kidd wasn't expecting Durant to be out there (it's not his usual rotation) and didn't notice until it was too late, and/or (2) the Mavs had an 11-point lead going in, and he (wrongly) thought this jerry-rigged unit could hold the fort for a few minutes, or even if they didn't, the regular Mavs could recover. 

I don't want to pile on here, but I am looking for things we can explain (as opposed to the seemingly inexplicably bad three-point shooting). I think this Nets run, from which the team never recovered, was down to a poor coaching choice.