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Brooklyn Nets charred by LeBron James explosion, lose 116-104 to Los Angeles Lakers

The Nets were never competitive enough to win on Sunday night, but they were competitive enough to induce another special LeBron moment.

By Lucas Kaplan
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Los Angeles Lakers v Brooklyn Nets Photo by Michelle Farsi/Getty Images

The Brooklyn Nets entered their Sunday evening contest with the Los Angeles Lakers having built up a bit of goodwill. The black-and-white were riding a three-game win-streak, their first such streak since they opened December with three Ws, the longest active win-streak in the East!

Sure, the three wins had come against bad-or-awful Eastern Conference teams, but wins are wins, and they’d even created some good vibes at the end of a season that has been bereft of them.

The Nets didn’t just come crashing back to Earth to start Sunday’s game; the Lakers slammed them through the Barclays Center hardwood, holding them scoreless for half-a-quarter. Even the pro-LeBron James/Lakers crowd couldn’t muster too much energy for a 17-0 start to the night for the guests.

In a frightening mismatch, Anthony Davis shut off the rim against one of the NBA’s worst driving teams, and things would get worse before they’d get better. Gabe Vincent, making his season debut for L.A., hit a runner off the backboard to make it 31-7 with just two minutes left in the quarter.

And while this game recap will continue, the game ended there. The Nets oscillated between making pseudo-runs and embarrassing themselves completely, often undermining their own ability to get closer than the high-teens...

“They just came out and asserted their will from the jump. We got down by a lot of points against a team like that it’s gonna be hard to dig out of a hole,” said Nic Claxton, flatly.

Cam Thomas agreed: “They made shots, we didn’t. That’s all it is to it. I mean, we went like 0-for-10 at the start. They didn’t really do nothing too crazy.”

Brooklyn’s offense eventually reached respectable levels after their horrid start, but the Lakers still pushed off of every rebound, with LeBron looking like a quarterback prospect at his Pro Day, throwing go-route after go-route...

The positives for Brooklyn weren’t many but Trendon Watford did come off the bench to produce for the fourth straight game. He’d finish with 15 points on 7-of-10 shooting, muscling the ball toward the rim as fans have become accustomed to, even when Davis was on the court...

“Without Trendon, I don’t know if we score in the first quarter, it looked like,” said Interim Head Coach Kevin Ollie. “He’s getting downhill ... he just plays with pace and he plays fearless. Taking the ball to the rim, we’ve been struggling with that all year trying to convert rim-shots, but he seems like he takes it downhill ... He’s gonna keep getting rewarded for the play that he’s doing, and hopefully he continues to play these seven games the right way.”

Cam Thomas, led the Nets’ most serious charge of the night in the early fourth quarter. He scored 20 points after the half to finish with 30, grinding through a disjointed, unintentional half-court offense to draw 12 free-throw attempts in total where he did most of his damage.

Thomas even hit a 3-pointer to cut the Laker lead to 90-82 to open the fourth quarter, the first time the Nets had been within single-digits in nearly two hours. It would be the last time, as the efforts of LSU boys Thomas and Watford merely served as a foil for the main attraction: LeBrawwn Jaaaames.

Born had played a solid game up to the fourth quarter, but hadn’t produced any signature moments for a crowd covered in purple-and-gold. That soon changed, with the 39-year-old legend hitting four 3-pointers, each more ridiculous than the last...

It was not a reminder of the star-power the Nets once had, no cause for rumination on a failed era. LeBron James has no facsimile, his signature moments don’t induce longing when you’re on the other side of the fence, but rather gratitude for being able to witness them at all.

Said Ollie: “He just got one of those ‘flow’ moments. That’s what greatness is, just a great player. He had it going tonight, and I tip my hat off to him.”

Ollie is obviously correct, but it’s only a half-truth. LeBron’s flow-state doesn’t look like anybody else’s because he hasn’t just mastered shooting or passing or driving or shot-blocking, but all of it, and can tap into whatever skill he desires. Will he drop four straight no-look dimes, drive for four straight finishes, make four straight steals?

Or will he score 40 points and tie a career-high with nine threes, saving four ridiculous ones for the final quarter, falling out of bounds left and right as they fell through the net?

A juicy Nets-Lakers matchup on paper didn’t spark too many flames. Dennis Schröder did finish as Brooklyn’s third-leading scorer, but did nothing to re-ignite his war of words with ex-teammate D’Angelo Russell, who scored 18 points of his own. Spencer Dinwiddie took just two shots, though Dennis Smith Jr. and Day’Ron Sharpe did enjoy the airball he put up...

But anything those three guards could’ve said or done pales in comparison to LeBron James simply taking the court and holding it dear, as kings do. He ended Brooklyn’s hopes of winning Sunday’s game just as he ended the Jason Kidd-Vince Carter era in 2007, and ended the Who Wants A Piece of Them era in 2014.

At least this performance hurt less, and was more entertaining than LeBron’s previous beatdowns of Brooklyn. Far from a playoff series, these Nets were beneath his best efforts. But the crowd wasn’t, and that’s who he played to...

“This is New York, too. So we got to predict that, that he’s gonna try to show out, being in New York,” said Ollie.

Predicting such a performance, of course, is a whole lot different than stopping it.

Final Score, Los Angeles Lakers 116, Brooklyn Nets 104

Milestone Watch

Halfway through the first quarter, the Nets were on pace to set a miserable type of record, but their offense corrected just enough to provide some real milestones.

  • Cam Thomas became the fourth Net to record two 30-point games vs. the Lakers in a single season, joining James Harden, Stephon Marbury, and John Williamson.
  • Thomas finishes March averaging 26.81 points on the month, a career-high in any month for the 22-year-old. His 4.27 assists in March also represent a career-high.
  • Mikal Bridges finished just 5-of-16 from the field, but his three 3-pointers vaulted him into fourth-place all-time in Nets single-season history. His 203 long-balls trail just D’Angelo Russell (234), Patty Mills (211), and Joe Harris (207).

Spencer Dinwiddie Speaks

Spencer Dinwiddie is not one to do anything quietly, but his return to the Barclays Center fell more on the reserved side. Prior to his first game against the Nets since his second departure from the franchise, he spoke to assembled media in the Lakers’ locker room, and while he wasn’t eager to tear his former team apart, he did want to set the record straight.

When asked what was mischaracterized about his exit from Brooklyn, Dinwiddie simply replied, “Everything. Everything. Every single thing. Everything.”

Alright then. It seems that Dinwiddie wasn’t just referring to the noise that he’d given up on the team by January — or as Zach Lowe memorably termed it, that he looked like he’d gone on “strike” — or just to the recent Shams Charania report that the team had told him to stop handling the ball, but rather, to all of it. He had also denied reports he wanted a buyout ... then took one from the Toronto Raptors without even crossing the border.

Ultimately, Dinwiddie declined to dive into the specifics of what he perceived as misinformation about his exit: “And you know, I know that people say what they say from other places, whether it be organization, other positions or whatever. So sometimes obviously, as a player, like you said, things get mischaracterized or your voice gets drowned out. That’s just kind of the situation I ended up in.”

Still, Dinwiddie couldn’t help but take a couple side-swipes at the Nets. He noted that his main responsibility on the Lakers, as he viewed it on the Nets, is to play defense, but that “on this team, I think it’s been something that’s been celebrated, appreciated.”

Finally, when asked about playing for the Lakers, he simply said, “to play purposeful basketball, though, is a phenomenal experience to be part of. You definitely don’t want to be just kind of flailing in the wind.”

Nic Claxton touches on new fashion line with

In partnership with the Brooklyn Nets, Nic Claxton has released “the Clax Collection” as part of the bǝrō fashion line. bǝrō [pronounced bEH-roe], as described by Vogue Magazine, was launched by the Nets in December as their own private label, designed to exist in a space outside of NBA licensee-designed products.

“I mean they came up to me asked me if I wanted to do a collab with bǝrō and it was an easy ‘yes,’” said Claxton. “I was pretty hands on with the whole designing process and I’m really liking the way everything came out.”

Claxton has long touted fashion as one of his off-court passions, “especially since being drafted here in Brooklyn. Fashion is definitely something that really started — kind of fell in love with since I’ve been here and hopefully I can get deeper and deeper into it.”

The timing of his collection with Brooklyn’s private line is of note, considering his impending unrestricted free agency this summer.

Next Up

Indiana Pacers v Chicago Bulls Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images

The Brooklyn Nets scurried out of the Barclays Center on Sunday to catch a flight to Indiana, where they’ll be playing the Pacers on the second night of a back-to-back. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. ET on Monday night.

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