The Nets hung close with the Celics in Boston Sunday afternoon, but came up short once again. The Celtics took control of the game with a 9-0 run early in the fourth quarter and were up 13 with less than three minutes to go. The Nets made a late run and cut it to three in the final minute, but the Celtics put the game away at the free throw line. The Nets outrebounded the Celtics 41-40, but shot just 41% from the field and 5-17 from 3-point range. Brook Lopez led the Nets with 21 points, 8 boards and 3 blocks, getting to the line 14 times. Yi Jianlian added 20 points and 8 rebounds and Josh Boone finished with 14 points and 7 boards. Courtney Lee scored 11 points in his Nets debut, while Paul Pierce led all scorers with 25 points.
October 11th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Yi today is the king,lol
October 11th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
T-Will shouldve played more. He is the most capable defender we have for someone like Paul Perice. This is why he should start, we will have Someone to slow down other SF’s. And offensively his shot has improved ALOT.
October 11th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Really solid performances by Yi and Boone, let’s hope they keep it up… Brook is a beast… Happy to see C-Lee finally making his Nets debut!
October 11th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
YO YI WENT 20 AND 8 WITH 2 STEALS. WHERE ARE THE HATERS!?
October 11th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
and he played against kg, but it is only preseason, lets see him do it vs magic
October 11th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Ha! and he went 8-15 and 1-2 behind the arc !!!
October 11th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Lopez needs to watch the fouls. He was in foul trouble all day
October 11th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
It looks like a good game overall for our team. I thought we would’ve lost by double digits. Yi and Boone played well tonight, but the rest of our bench didn’t play as well. We lost the game when our second unit was playing.
Our most consistent player has to be Brook, in these past three games… he is the most consistent player out of everyone that played.
I look forward to seeing our team continue to improve, and become more consistent playing on both ends of the floor.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
maybe this means we can actually play well and stay in the game against celtics this year, and we didn’t even have harris who would of dropped atleast 15. oh yeah rafer alston sucks.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
a healthy devin harris, or even a healthy dooling, and this would have been a W. Still am happy with the play of the bigs but i am worried about the consistency or lack there of for this young team. right after having a very good game vs the sixers, TWill turns around and has a much lesser affect on this game.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
@ Jackey
We’re 0-3 and Yi has fouled out in 2 of them. He’s just warming up. And Najera at back up PF is going to help. lol.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Lets remember these are replacement refs who are being paid $1,100 a game.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
This is the first game I was able to watch this year… I must say, I am pumped. The only downside of course, as I have been saying… Alston. He was HORRIBLE, as always. All you who say “he took a team to the finals…” noooo the team took him to the finals.
Yi was great… I expected him to fold after KG got all up in his face, I would have folded after that. Great confidence.
Brook is an offensive machine, I would like more boards from him. He needs to start training with Tim Grover and get more explosive.
Nets!
October 11th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
@libigman
Fouling out in preseaon means nothing. Just getting used to the defensive ends. Atleast Yi’s hitting some shots, and knowing that he can score when he gets 10+ shots a game instead of 10-. WHich often only gets him 5-9 points.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Everyone must be so disappointed they can’t write posts detailing how badly Yi sucked today. Oh well, theres always next game, right??
October 11th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Hmmmm…..let me think about this…..
um……
FIRE FRANK!!!!!!
October 11th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
The Twin Towers are back! We probably would’ve won this game with Harris and Lee playing 100% for the whole game. CDR should be immediately released for shaming the organization with less than 20 points today. If Harris is 100% healthy, commits to defense and averages 21/6 per game, Lee is 100% healthy and defends well on the perimeter as he did last year, maybe gives us 15/4/4 per game, T-Will/CDR combo works out as good as it has in preseason with T-Will being a big-time defensive stopper and CDR being a 14-16 ppg kind of guy, then we have Yi giving us 15/8 and Lopez giving us 20/9, we have a team that will win 35-40 games this year.
Problem is none of this will come true and we’ll finish the season 22-60 …
October 11th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Brook is a beast!
Game 3- 21 pts in 23 mins
Game 2- 18 pts in 32 mins, about 8 in 4th qtr
Game 1- 19 pts in 22 mins…
Is it me or can this guy legitimately avg 25 pts this yr?!
We must run our offense through him! We are a playoff team with him as our #1 option!
October 11th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
what happen between yi and kg? they had a beef?
good game today from a short rotation. as long as we beat the knicks the next 2 games i will be happy.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I did not see the game – too busy regretting benching Miles Austin on my fantasy team. Anyways – I don’t like to see DNP next to Sean’s name. Frank has to play Yi, Boone and Williams and nobody else at the 4.
Liked seeing that Boone hit 4-6 from the stripe though. I have always been a Boone fan – and think that he can be a good PF in this league – or at least an above average backup PF.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Talk about playing til the last minute..CDR scored 4 points with 50.5 seconds left in the game! CDR left with 12 pts (6/15), 3 rebs, 4 asts. GREAT GAME for Brook, YI, and Josh. Welcome to the Nets team, Courtney Lee. And that was against BOSTON!! I’m liking this team more and more each game. They just need more games experience. But these young men are going to shock some of you and please more of you. GO NETS!!!
October 11th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Good team effort. Looking at the line ups you wouldn’t have given us a chance but everyone fought hard – and get the fouls to prove it. OK we are 0-3 in preseason, but we have yet to field our best side. We will need this level of team comitment if we are to get anything out of the season, but today shows that as a team we can compete.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
From the boxscore, it seems that YI did not play badly on offense, but how was his defense, and did he go to the rim?
TWILL & CDR need to shoot better. CDR got an awful lot of minutes for someone shooting 6-15. LFRANK is not overworking Brook, I agree. No reason for him to play more than 23 minutes in the third pre-season game. His stat line was great. Did Boone play the 4 or the 5? How did Lee look?
I can’t wait for real TV coverage. We are going to be better than ESPN’s folks think we are going to be. GO NETS!
October 11th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
dwight? we got brook lopez who has better offense sure dwight is bigger stronger but brook is the new tim duncan.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Nets dont seem like they want to win, they just think they are going to lose thats why they give up in the 4th. They are expected to lose so they dont try. The only one who tried was Rafer Alston. ENOUGH SAID!
October 11th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
@ Randy Oreens:
Nets were down by 12 and cut it to 3 with less than a minute left. That doesn’t seem to me like they quit. I wasn’t able to see the game, but it looks like Rafer didn’t play too well. Did you watch the game, Randy?? Nets played without their allstar and kept it close. Who cares about 0-3..preseason means nothing.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
interesting so far … i like the fire from the guys.TWILL needs to step up or else he might be soon be forgotten in franks rotation.I know he’a a rookie but its the nba welcome.Home game on tues cmon nets fans when our guys get introduced i want to hear ur roar.
@Randy Oreens
Your pathetic , give it up cause Lebron ah comin…ouch thats gotta hurt you lol
October 11th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
pretty hopeful for an 0 & 3 team so far…. going to be a long season. Watching the kids will be fun though…
October 11th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
very optimistic for this coming season, nice core. Randy Oreens has to be an act, right?
October 11th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
@ Paul Erstein et al
Go to NBA.com for the game’s play-by-play and Box Score data. Gives a pretty good picture of “how everyone did”.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
yi with 20? are my eyes ok? happy for boone…i like boone and i really hope yi and boone keep it up.
brook is the man…i knew this would happen ever since we drafted him. best thing that has happened to the nets in a while. go brook…go nets!
October 11th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
yall keep throwing the stat, “0-3″ but plz remember. The knicks were UNDEFEATED in the preseason and went on to win only 23 games lol.
October 11th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
From what the play-by-play said it looks like Yis buckets came mostly off of jumpers with a couple of dunks/layups. Its great he hit them but will it last? I really wish he would use his post game we saw during the fiba games. Or at least try to.
Also, you dont really win or lose pre season games. They just sorta happen and you learn from them. We are not 0-3, we have just played 3 games.
October 11th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
@Net Income
can u “pleasee” block Randy Oreens from posting this guy knows nothing about basketball !
October 11th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
could someone who was able to watch the game provide some detail on Yi’s performance? I’m really interested in how he scored his points — going to the rim? What kinds of moves/situations? Wonderful to see sucn positive production (I’m normally a Yi critic and would love if he proved me wrong).
randy oreens’ posts are so consistently incomprehensible and inane that i’m not sure even he could realistically believe them to be true.
October 11th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
@ Boki
Yi didnt go to the rim much… but the Defence was giving him the outside shot so he took it… without hesitation which was great. KG and him had a little scuffle in the first few min, and KG was like face to face with him like a wrestler, Yi kinda backed off a little, and I was for sure that would be the end of Yi for the game. He lkept with it though, and hit a great % of his shots. As far as D goes, he was C+ B- material. He was also going against KG who jsut faded away the whole time so there wasn’t much he could do.
October 11th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
@tim
I agree watching the highlights Yi played aggressive with KG which is great improvement from last year. Also Did yall see the play where they tripled team Lopez he stuck with it got 3 consecutive rebounds then slammed it B-Lo is a BEAST !
October 11th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
@Paul Erstein
CDR didn’t have his previous 20 pts preseason game, but he did a good job containing Ray Allen, had 4 asts (3 to Yi and one to Boone)and 3 rebs. And how about Yi’s aggression today? I’m encouraged that a lot of our players are showing progress. I’m well satisfied and look forward to continued growth. GO NETS!!
October 11th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
thanks Tim. great to hear.
October 11th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
I wouldn’t say CDR stopped Ray… Ray wasn’t really playing. However… TWill played great D on Peirce, although the stats wouldn’t signify. He had a hand in his face every time, and there are just some players you cant do much about.
October 11th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
This is the kind of game where you feed Brook the ball 50 times and make the Bos bigs foul out. yi was left open so you cant blame him on the 15 attempts, but Brook should have had at least 35 points.KIKI SAYS THE NETS ATTACK?
Use your most skilled big man to attack!
TWill should have guarded Pierce more.
I think rafer needs to be traded so the core of DH CDR TWill and Lee can learn how to play off each other.
Skip has to be an assest as a mentor to the guards or he has got to go.His minutes could be used to develop one of these young players
love ya skip
October 11th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
and this is without harris
October 11th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Too Bad the Match wasn’t on TV!
October 11th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
How come YI plays better when D. Harris isn’t playing???
October 11th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
@DJ HeavyDuty
Your complaining about Brooks “attempts?” Did you watch the game? Its not about attempts, its about taking a good shot. He played PERFECT. He didn’t “attempt” just to put up shots, he passed back door when needed, passed out to Yi when needed… he was perfect.
Plus I don’t want skip to mentor anyone on the Nets. He will teach them how t make bad passes and complain a lot?
October 11th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
TWill has the potential to average 10-12 pts 5-7 reb and 3-5 assists a game.
October 11th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
@ Anwaisa
COINCIDENCE.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
@Tim
im just saying that if Lebron was hot and the D kept fouling. You keep him on the court and feed him the ball everytime. the early 5th foul wkept him off the floor.
The ball needs to go through brook like he is Shaq or Duncan
October 11th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
@ DJ HeavyDuty
Agreed!
I know its too early to call but Brook can be a Hall of Fame center! He is so skilled.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
i hope brook is a net for life!
October 11th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Holla
Brook is more atletic than people think.
He did a reverse 2 hand dunk off a put back over DH last year that got no press.
Brook is way beyong DHoward on offense
2 Yrs and Brook will be the best center in the east.
October 11th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Will Lee stay with the role off the bench?
Harris, CDR, T-Will, Yi, Lopez ! Bench:Lee?
October 11th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
@DJ HeavyDuty
But if you watched the game… it DID go through Brook! He just didnt choose to shoot it! Which is great! He showed high bball iq!
October 11th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
I think it is better Frank use TWill at 3 for now without moving him around. After all he is still a rook. He needs to know his position and let him play there. Otherwise he is going to be lost.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
@Tony
T-Will’s basketball IQ is too good for him to get lost. That was the whole purpose of drafting him because he’s versatile he could play multiple positions not just the three he’s not going to be lost he’s just a rookie getting his feet wet in preseason.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Also because this is preseason you have to test him out at multiple positions because he is so versatile to see if you could use him at those positions during the regular season. Better to do that now then wait till the season starts to do it.
October 12th, 2009 at 12:39 am
Last season Yi went on that 3 game streak of good games after Devin Harris sat on the bench.
This preseason dude scores 20 and 8 in the game without Harris. Hmm…
October 12th, 2009 at 12:44 am
mikee21,
It is not good to move him around 3,2 and 1 while he is trying to learn the pro game. Stick him to 3 and use him at 2 occasionally. We’ve three PGs ( I know two were injured so it could have been forced situation) so let him be the starting SF that focus on defense. Having him with starting unit would reduce the need for him to score.
October 12th, 2009 at 1:29 am
Howard is better than lopez all around
October 12th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Im from Poland, and Im worried that Im not gonna watch nets single game this season
October 12th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Lame! like i said in an earlier post the nets would drop 0-3
Plz frank leave harris to rest. dont let him play or his ankle could be problem if not healthy on reg. season, same for courtney lee.
this games are nothing but a preview of whats is coming, with harris out or injured we might drop to 0-10.
Sigh i hate that!!!
Preseason starting 5:
Boone
Najera or Sean
Hassell
CDR
Alston
By the way, horrible shooting from alston last night 1-6, thats one of the things that made the Magics lost to the Lakers, alston poor shooting, i mean he has his nights but there are sometimes when if you see 3 shoots havent hit the rim its time to past the ball to someone else
October 12th, 2009 at 8:46 am
I have said this before. Yi plays better when he knows he doesnt have to defer to a better player. If you tell him Harris, VC, Lopez and Yao is the main option, he plays a robin role. If you put him on the court without a better player on the court to defer to, he becomes more aggressive ala this Summer Tournaments and Harris on the bench. That is why I would like to see Yi play center with the second or third unit. Give him the ball in the post and run the same plays you run for Lopez. It isnt Brain surgery. Put players in positions to be successful.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Where are the Nets Beat writers????
October 12th, 2009 at 8:50 am
@MagicCarter – I disagree with you. Right now, Howard is a better player because of his defense and overall athleticism. Offensively Howard sucks. His baby hook sucks. He has no low post moves. He reminds me of a young Shaq when he was on the Magic, all strength and power dunking on people breaking backboards but has to work on his over all game. The guy is good but not all around. I give him a year or two to develop some more post moves then u can come back and talk.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:14 am
@ SIC, about Yi.
Yours is a plausible analysis. We know playing Yi as a starter hasn’t worked and the extreme cost to the team. We know we must (obviously) play him. We have seen examples of what Yi can do when he’s at his best (like yesterday against Boston). So why not try another way to make Yi fit?
October 12th, 2009 at 9:24 am
The Nets are going to be fun to watch. So far so good. C. Lee has got to start. Right now Lee is a better all round player then CDR. T-Will also should be starting, unless he’s over matched. As for Yi, he is the 3rd option in the Nets offense, maybe 4th if Lee is scoring. You cannot expect him to score 20 points every night. Yi will be fine avg. 12 + 6. Remember Nets fans, this is just the start of big things to come. Patience is the operative word. Lets go Nets, now and forever!
October 12th, 2009 at 9:25 am
lopez and dejuan blair is a devastating pair to have at the frontline…
October 12th, 2009 at 10:15 am
@ Tony, I also noticed the lack of local NJ coverage (not to mention NY) about this preseason game. yes, it only preseason, but at least 4 different Boston papers covered it. sad organization. I blame Yormark. and fire Frank.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:19 am
oh yeah, Dejuan Blair went 11-of-13 from the field and 6-of-10 from the foul line to lead all scorers with 28 points. He hit a layup with 1:01 in the game, boosting the San Antonio Spurs to a 95-93 win over the Miami Heat.
October 12th, 2009 at 11:36 am
@ Tony and JohnY
I was just thinking the same thing about the local coverage. So, i guess not one of our beat writers was at the game? Maybe its their employers cutting down on expenses. Regardless… it is so weak..
@JohnY
Wow about Dejuan Blair. Only preseason but it sounds like he’s exactly what the Nets needed.
October 12th, 2009 at 11:55 am
We could have had Blair for cheap if we had owner who likes to spend something, anything…. Oh well… Hopefully Russian will take care of this franchise.
October 12th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Tony-
This is only preseason. He has shown the ability, and if you read about interviews, the desire to play all 3 positions – especially PG.
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but at times, the 2/3 positions become interchangeable – and Terrence has the size, speed, athleticism, and strength to switch between both.
There’s no hurting putting him at all three positions, especially considering we’re trying to develop our players.
Also – did you know Courtney spent time working on PG last season? Obviously, he has never been a natural PG…
October 12th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I reallt cant wait for the season 2 start.
October 13th, 2009 at 10:19 am
People that like Blair. Dont worry about it. It will only take a Roger Mason injury or Parker ankle sprain for San Antonio to come knocking for Alston or Dooling. If Blair continues to show some promise and his knees dont give out, we maybe able to pry him away or any other young PF from another team.