The Brooklyn Nets haven’t had the start to their season that they were expecting. They are 1-2 heading into the second week of the NBA season as things have been more of a struggle than anticipated.
The Nets are playing without starting point guard Kyrie Irving, who remains out because he has not received his COVID-19 vaccination. The mandate in New York states you need to be vaccinated to take part in events in the city, so he is ineligible for games at Barclays Center and Madison Square Garden.
They are adjusting to life without him. In the season opener, they were blown out by the Milwaukee Bucks, 127-104. In the second game of the season against the Philadelphia 76ers, they won 114-109. However, it wasn’t a performance to get excited about.
The 76ers didn’t make a basket the last 5:33 of the game, scoring only one point in that span of time. Them going cold helped propel the Nets to a victory, but any momentum they thought they were building was put out by the Charlotte Hornets.
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Charlotte went into Brooklyn and blew the Nets out 111-95 on the back of an excellent second half in which they outscored Brooklyn 61-37.
Kevin Durant did everything he could to help get the team a win, scoring 38 points. Following the game, he expressed confidence in the team because they aren’t waiting for Irving to come through the doors and save them.
“While we are playing in a game, I am not going to sit there and say … when we get down or it is a tight game, like ‘Damn, we don’t have enough,'” Durant said. “We are not going to be thinking about [that] during the game. We definitely want Kyrie Irving out here on the floor. And he is a huge part of what we do. But it is not happening right now. So we got to figure it out.
“But no one is going to lose confidence while we playing and hope Kyrie comes to save us during the game. No, we got to play. Everybody here is confident in what they do. We just got to play.”
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Playing without a starter, especially one that is as important as Irving, is not an easy thing to do. He is a big piece of the puzzle for their success as they have a drastic fall off from Kevin Durant and James Harden to the next players on the roster.
They will have to find a way to get things rolling without Irving because it doesn’t seem like he will be returning any time soon.
