Brooklyn entered Thursday’s crosstown clash set to face a Knicks team with an interim head coach and a bottom-five defense.
The Nets left with a 94-82 loss and a historically awful showing from the field.
When the day after Christmas was done, Brooklyn had polished off a putrid 21-for-78 (26.9 percent) shooting performance, the worst by any team since Orlando lost to Boston 87-56 in 2012. The Nets’ performance was punctuated by just eight made two-point field goals: the fewest by any franchise since the shot clock was instituted in 1954.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, not since 1950 — when the Fort Wayne Pistons edged the Minneapolis Lakers 19-18 (not a typo!) — has a team made eight or fewer two-pointers.
Only two Nets players scored in double figures. One of them was Spencer Dinwiddie (25 points, 5-15 FGs), who could only ruefully blame the recent holiday for team’s struggles.
“Let’s go with too much eggnog,” Dinwiddie said. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”
Even DeAndre Jordan and Jarrett Allen, each of them big men shooting better than 65 percent on the season, finished a combined 2-for-8 from the field. The entire performance left Dinwiddie struggling to find different ways to describe the Nets’ forgettable night.
“We were really, really bad,” Dinwiddie said. “Like laughably bad. We shot really bad. Probably historically bad.”
The Brooklyn Nets' eight two-point field goals on Thursday were the fewest by a team in a game since Nov. 22, 1950, when the Lakers and Pistons each made four FG in a game famous for its final score (19-18, Ft. Wayne). The 24-second shot clock debuted less than four years later.
— Elias Sports Bureau (@EliasSports) December 27, 2019
