Harden won the game for them.

Refs were apalling.

I feel like there’s a connection here…

Seriously though, I will never enjoy/appreciate Harden as much as I probably should because I hate watching his wholly unnatural contorting and whining – we all hated seeing CP3 and Blake do stuff like this, but Harden belongs in his own category, with Trae Young and Luka looking like they’re ready to follow in his footsteps. There’s not much you can do about policing drives and layups, but I really think the NBA needs to explicitly tell refs to not blow the whistle when a jumpshooter intentionally and unnaturally jumps into a defender.

What I liked:

Kawhi at beginning. He was great but at times he needs to find more help.
Batum’s offensive balls. Wish Kennard was like this.
Morris. His most mature performance, I liked how he took tough shots, I love how he didn’t get provoked by the Nets or the refs.
PG’s clutch 3. I wanted more of that.
Shot selection at times.

What I didn’t like:

Ibaka’s play offensively.
Zu being redered useless.
Lack of depth. Not sure Ty Lue tried enough to mix up the lineups. We essentially played with 8 players.
Shot selection at times.
Jackson unfortunately gave a solid game for a 3rd string PG but Pat Bev was missed tonight.

Other observations:

Nets were desperate after the loss to the Wizards.
Durant and Irving were very hot but I think that Harden won the game for them.
Refs were apalling.
Our edge so far in the NBA is the excellent shot selection and moving the ball on offense. We didn’t do that during the whole game and it showed. Plenty of bad iso ball at times.

But I loved the game, the playoff feel and how close we were to winning.
Be optimistic people!
We are not perfect but better than last year.

Reggie is & will be a good backup to have.. He has his questionable moments but so does everyone.. Gotta stop evaluating him under a microscope & start evaluating him the same we do everyone else

Luke is the real question mark going forward.. He did nothing wrong & felt he pressed a bit on his 2nd attempt but I’ll take it.. Didn’t like that Lue went away from him

Bad part: we lost the game everybody wanted to win.

Good part: we played like a team and lost mostly to individuals. Kyrie and KD shot 36/46 from the field. Almost 80% and we almost survived. As great as they are, these numbers can happen for them any single game but they cannot keep it come playoffs series (but they can still keep it over 50% to be honest which is scary good).

Both teams wanted to win badly with Ty Lue trimming rotations to 7 (if you exclude 4min of Kennard). It also showed who is not afraid of the moment and who is really not good enough for this type of games.

Up to the challenge:

Kawhi, Batum, Morris, Ibaka (I know he had a bad game but he is proven and one of just two guys with a ring on our roster). I am sure Beverley belongs to this list too (and he is a differece maker as we know).

Still in question:

Paul George – difficult to judge him here. He definately tried hard and was agressive, made some tough shots, but also bricked some heavily. In games like this we might need 35-point George and not 26t.
Lou Williams – he is having a new role for this team but I don’t think this is his game. He makes bad shots. I stopped enjoying his game, which was once so smooth and fun to watch.
Zu – agree that he might be useful for particular matchups (like Jokic) but I don’t think he can find a major role against team playing small. He is shooting 94% on free throws in the last 10 games. Why can’t he develop a realiable jumper?

Not good enough:

Reggie – he can be great to help get some regular season wins as he did the last couple of games, but games like this is not his level I am afraid.
Kennard – if he can’t get confidence playing against teams we faced over the last 11 games, then don’t coun’t on him, when the bar goes up. Yes, it was just 2 shots, but you could have felt, they were far from going in. Lue quickly realized.

To summarize, I can see 5 guys we can definately rely on, one star that still needs to prove himself and two guys who can only be playable for particular matchups. Unless Kennard can pick it up, we need to add someone reliable, otherwise we are pretty thin come playoffs time.

That being said, we are not that far away from where we want to be I believe and we are also heading in the right direction. Let’s pray for the health and good things shoudl happen.

I just hope it won’t be the same referees when these 2 clubs go at it again in 3 weeks.