CHICAGO – From a standings perspective Johnny Townsend Color Rush Jersey , the Brooklyn Nets don’t have much left to play for this season.
But don’t tell that to Nets coach Kenny Atkinson, who, heading into Saturday’s road game against the Chicago Bulls, isn’t finished finding positives from an otherwise disappointing season. The glimmers of hope come after the Nets (26-53) connected on 19 3-point field goals and shot 48.7 percent from beyond the arc on Thursday in a 119-111 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks.
The Nets finished with at least 10 long-distance connections for the 14th consecutive game, which tied a franchise record. Brooklyn snapped a two-game losing streak despite playing without injured forward DeMarre Carroll (left hip) and center Jahlil Okafor (right ankle).
Now, the Nets will look to keep building momentum for the future when they play the Bulls, who, like Brooklyn, remain focused on the bigger picture.
“I keep saying, ‘We’re playing for a lot’,” Atkinson told reporters after Thursday’s victory in Milwaukee. “We’re playing for our future Andrei Svechnikov Jersey , we’re playing for our culture…we’re playing for our fans.”
How close to full strength the Nets will be Saturday in Chicago remains uncertain. Carroll is listed as day-to-day for the remainder of the season while it’s possible Okafor could play against the Bulls.
While Allen Crabbe paced Brooklyn’s offense against the Bucks with 25 points, Nets center Jarrett Allen blocked a career-high five shots on a night when the Nets blocked 12 shots despite being without Carroll and Okafor.
“(Allen) has to be our paint-patroller and rim protector,” Atkinson told reporters after Thursday’s victory.
The Bulls (27-52) saw their three-game winning streak snapped on Friday with a 111-104 loss to the Boston Celtics. Chicago wraps up its home slate on Saturday against the Nets, and the Bulls will face the Nets again on Monday in Brooklyn before wrapping up the regular season on the road against the Detroit Pistons.
For everything this season has produced, between the fight between then-teammates Bobby Portis and Nikola Mirotic to start the season, injuries and a focus on the future, coach Fred Hoiberg has appreciated the way his team handled what proved to be a season-long roller-coaster ride.
While the Bulls have spent the season in the first year of what is expected to be a multi-year rebuilding process, Hoiberg has been forced to remain patient with a young group of players.
“I give our guys a lot of credit,” Hoiberg said this week, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “I’ve said it all along: Our guys have played the right way. They’ve found a way to fight through adversity.
“That has been our message to our team – we’re not looking at the end of the game when we come in here, win-loss. The wins are obviously nice Dorance Armstrong Jr. Color Rush Jersey , but you’re looking at, did you play harder than the other team? And, for the most part, our guys have competed at a very high level every time they stepped on the floor.”
Like Atkinson, Hoiberg sees value in how the Bulls finish the final three games of the year as he and the Bulls front office begin to plan ahead to next year. Chicago is building around is young core of talent that includes rookie Lauri Markkanen and Kris Dunn and Zach LaVine, both of whom have been shut down for the season due to injuries.
“You look at the standings, where we are and what we’re still trying to accomplish,” Hoiberg said. “And there are still some important minutes this season.”
Danny Ainge tore apart the team that made the Eastern Conference finals last year, and then put together a new roster that came one victory from playing for an NBA title.
This summer may present him with an even bigger challenge: standing pat.
With Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving coming back from injuries to join fellow All-Star Al Horford and young stars Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, the Boston Celtics general manager doesn’t really need to do much to give the NBA’s most-decorated franchise a chance at its 18th title.
But he also said: ”You never know what opportunities will present themselves.”
The Celtics finished with the No. 1 seed in the East in 2017, but the five-game loss to the Cavaliers in the conference finals reinforced what Ainge already suspected: that that team was not going to take the next step.
He went after Hayward (and, unsuccessfully, Kevin Durant), then won the draft lottery.
It still wasn’t enough.
When Irving asked the Cavaliers to trade him, Ainge pounced, giving up fan favorite Isaiah Thomas in a package that left Boston with 11 new players. (He also wheeled the No. 1 overall pick to Philadelphia for a future No. 1 and the right to draft Tatum – the player he says he really wanted.)
Despite losing Hayward in the first quarter of the season opener, and Irving in March, the Celtics had home-court advantage for Game 7 and led the Cavaliers with six minutes left in the fourth quarter. But with the Celtics shooters turning ice cold, LeBron James proved to be too much Cheap Sam Darnold Jersey , amassing 35 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists while playing every second of the game.
”The farther you go in the playoffs, the more difficult it is to lose,” Ainge said. ”It was one of those games we lost that we should have won. That’s going to eat at all of us for a while.”
But the team’s performance in the playoffs also gave the Celtics reason to believe that this team may be good enough to contend for the title. And with the two injured All-Stars returning, this summer doesn’t have to be like last summer.
”Last year, we didn’t know all that stuff was going to happen, but we do feel we have a bright future with this team,” Horford said. ”It’s something we’re all looking forward to. We can’t think about `what could have been.’ But when Kyrie is on our team, we’re at another level.”
The biggest issue for the Celtics this year is holding onto guard Marcus Smart, who is a restricted free agent and expected to draw offers of $12 million to $14 million. Ainge said the team is willing to pay the luxury tax if that’s what it takes to build a contender.
And Smart said he wants to stay.
”They’re already planning for me to be here,” he said at the team’s practice facility after exit interviews. ”I want to be in Boston. I’ve been here for four years. My heart’s here.”
”I hope we have something special with this group,” said Brown, who in his second year averaged 14.5 points and 4.9 rebounds per game. ”But in this league, you never know.”
And with Ainge calling the shots, it’s almost impossible to predict the future.
”We’re not going to do something unless it makes us better. And there’s no guarantee that those deals are there,” Ainge said. ”At this time last year, I didn’t think we would have 11 new players.”
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08.08.2018 09:40
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