From Rock Bottom to a Gut Punch: The Nets Ride the Full Spectrum of Defeat in 72 Hours
The Brooklyn Nets walked off the Madison Square Garden floor Wednesday night with the kind of loss that leaves a mark - a 54-point drubbing at the hands of the rival New York Knicks. It was historic, humiliating, and for a moment, it looked like the kind of loss that could fracture a locker room.
But inside that visiting locker room, there were no outbursts, no finger-pointing, no chairs flying. Just a quiet, subdued group of players processing a brutal night at the office.
Head coach Jordi Fernández took the blame postgame, standing in front of the media and saying what coaches are supposed to say - that the responsibility falls on him, that the players aren’t to blame. Whether he believed it or not, he wore it.
But the players? They didn’t wallow.
They didn’t spiral. Rookie Drake Powell mentioned that a couple veterans spoke up, but there was no fiery speech, no dramatic reckoning.
Just a quiet exit from a very loud defeat.
Michael Porter Jr. didn’t say much in the moment either. But later that night, he sent a message to the team: *“That’s my fault.
I’ve got to come in with that energy.” *
To Porter and the rest of the Nets, Wednesday wasn’t a collapse of chemistry or a crisis of identity. It was a bad game.
A really bad one. But still, just one game.
“It’s the time leading up to the game,” Porter explained two days later. “Your day off, your sleep, your prep - that’s what separates the good from the great. I wasn’t locked in the way I needed to be.”
That kind of introspection matters, especially on a team that’s learning how to take lumps and keep moving. Because in the NBA, there’s barely time to breathe between games, let alone dwell on disaster. The Nets had no choice but to regroup quickly - and they did.
On Friday night, they hosted the Boston Celtics, and while the result was still a loss, the vibe couldn’t have been more different. Brooklyn came out swinging.
Porter brought the energy he promised, attacking the glass and cutting with purpose. YES Network’s Noah Eagle called him “spry,” and for good reason - he looked like a player determined to make amends.
Nic Claxton, meanwhile, drew the toughest assignment of the night: guarding Jaylen Brown. And he delivered. Brown finished 9-of-27 from the field, and Claxton’s ability to hold his own in isolation was a key part of Brooklyn’s defensive game plan.
The crowd at Barclays Center, however, was another story. Celtics fans took over the building, drowning out the PA announcer’s “Broooook-lyyyyn” chants with a chorus of “M-V-P” for Brown. It was a tough scene for Nets loyalists, especially those few die-hards near press row who nearly got to celebrate a rare home win - only to watch their team botch a final sideline-out-of-bounds play that looked every bit like the work of a 12-31 team.
Still, the effort was there. The fight was real. And Fernández was proud of the response: “We got better today, and that’s most important,” he said postgame.
Porter wasn’t buying the moral victory. “We lost.
That’s all I really care about,” he said bluntly. “It was a game we should have won.
We’ve lost too many games this year that come down to the wire like this.”
That’s the difference between Wednesday and Friday. The blowout was embarrassing, sure - but it didn’t sting the way this one did.
This one hurt because it was winnable. Because they showed up.
Because they competed.
Claxton was still stewing in the locker room afterward. “We played a really good game,” he said.
“I feel like we deserved to win. We just didn’t execute enough down the stretch.
This one really hurt.”
And that’s what makes this stretch so telling for Brooklyn’s young core. They’re not tanking in spirit, even if the standings suggest otherwise. The front office may be playing the long game, but the guys on the floor are grinding through the short-term pain.
With the trade deadline 12 days away, Claxton and Porter Jr. - the team’s two highest-paid players - know their names could come up in rumors. But neither seems too fazed.
“It’s part of the business,” Claxton said. “You just got to be where your feet are and be a professional. It’s our job to come out here and perform whenever we put on a Brooklyn Nets uniform.”
Porter echoed that sentiment. “Honestly, I’m just going with the flow.
I’ve voiced already that I’m enjoying my time here. But everything else, I just try to let it be what it’s going to be.”
That kind of level-headedness is what’s made both players de facto veterans on one of the NBA’s youngest rosters. They’ve been thrust into leadership roles not because they asked for them, but because someone had to set the tone. And this week, they did.
Now, the Nets head west for a five-game road trip, starting in Los Angeles - a welcome escape from the snowstorm blanketing the Northeast. But the challenges don’t get any easier. The question now is whether they can bounce back from a gut-punch the same way they bounced back from a blowout.
Porter says no - they’re different. “You learn from them in different ways.
What happened at MSG was unacceptable, sure, but tonight there’s very specific things - late-game situations. So you can learn something from any game.”
Claxton, ever the realist, took the long view: “It’s so many games when you play an 82-game season. You really just can’t get too high, you can’t get too low.
You get beat by 50, you got to be ready to respond. If you lose a tough game like this, you just got to be even-keeled through everything.”
It’s a cliché, sure. But after experiencing both extremes in the span of 72 hours, the Nets know better than most - clichés exist for a reason.