Sometimes you just need to vent! Following his team’s third embarrassing performance in its past four games, Brooklyn Nets small forward Gerald Wallace let it all out.
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According to Mike Mazzeo at ESPNNewYork:
“Those are games that we didn’t actually lose … we got our asses kicked in all three of those games,” Wallace said after the Nets were annihilated by a motivated LeBron James and the Miami Heat, 105-85, on Wednesday night at Barclays Center.
“Those teams pretty much dominated us. Memphis dominated us. Houston dominated us. And Miami in the second half dominated us tonight. We’re saying we want to be one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference, and we want to compete for the playoffs and shoot for a championship, but we’re having letdowns against some of the top teams in the league and we can’t do that and be a successful team.”
The Nets (27-19) finished 0-3 against the Heat this season and have lost 13 straight to the Heat. In those three losses, they combined for 57 turnovers (19 per game) and shot 14 of 66 from 3-point range (21.2 percent), and were outscored by a total of 63 points (average scoring margin of minus-21).
“No. I don’t think so,” Wallace replied when asked if the Heat are 20 points better than the Nets. “Are they a good team? Yeah, they’re a good team. They’re the defending champions. But I don’t think they’re that much better than us. I don’t think they’re 20 points better than us. I’m not saying that they can’t beat us, but they’re not 20 points better than us.”
“Typical Nets basketball,” Wallace said of the third. “We don’t play together. Careless turnovers. We don’t execute offensively. And defensively, we don’t do anything. We don’t defend. We don’t guard the ball. We don’t help each other out. It’s the same story as it’s been all season.”
“I tell the guys, ‘Everything looks good against the average team because we’re able to make up because of our talent,’ ” Wallace said. “But when we play against these marquee teams, we can’t have those types of games and having the same thing happen over and over again.”
So how do they make it change?
“I don’t know,” Wallace said. “You can stick your finger on anything you want to stick it on. It’s just something we’ve gotta figure out as a team, how to come out and compete for four quarters. I really don’t even know what’s wrong.”
