In an extraordinary NBA TV post-game show, Isiah Thomas and Rick Fox ripped the Nets point guards and by extension, their game plan, with Thomas, the Hall of Fame point guard, saying that if he was Brook Lopez, he would have started a locker room fight with his point guards, "throw them up on the floor."
"Their reluctance to throw the ball inside baffles me," said an agitated Thomas. "As a big man playing for the Brooklyn Nets, I would be sooo upset with the guards. The big man should go into the locker room and there should be a fight with the little guard. He should grab that little guard and throw him up on the floor and say, 'Next time, when I'm open, throw me the call in the paint.'
"Watching the game as a point guard, I am seriously frustrated that you've got bigs underneath the basket with a man sealed on their back and you are reluctant to throw them the basketball."
"He had 14 points, 17 rebounds, six for seven! That ball should have been inside to him a lot more tonight. "
Rick Fox made fun of the Nets point guards as well. "In the guards' defense, he cut his hair. Maybe the guards didn't recognize him. Fox also recounted a conversation he had with Shaquille O'Neal off-camera. " 'Rick I would have torn the locker room up at halftime.' And he's right."
Fox also said he saw a lot of what he's seen all year from the Nets. "lost at times, not connected with an awareness of where they should be going."
Summing up, Fox suggested that Deron Williams and Joe Johnson may have been reacting to recent criticism.
"I don't know what the agendas are of everyone now that they've hit the playoffs. I'm sure that Deron Williams, with the comments that Paul Pierce has made, I'm sure he wants to prove those comments incorrect.
"Joe Johnson comes home here to Atlanta where he had such a stance here and he's getting booed. Maybe he wants to prove them incorrectly, and wrong about booing him. It just seems like a lot of individual agendas. But it should all start with the agenda of collectively beating the Hawks. And the best chances are with Brook Lopez touching the ball. "