East Rutherford, N.J. -- The Portland Trail Blazers may be the youngest team in the NBA but on this night – even with those young legs - you would have never thought that they were the team that played, and lost, a double-overtime contest in Toronto yesterday afternoon. The Blazers came into IZOD Center and swiftly dealt the Nets their second consecutive loss and third loss in their last four games. The 99-73 win was Portland’s 18th in their 20 games and put the Blazers at 23-14, after beginning the season 5-12.

The Nets, now back a game below .500 at 18-19, play the New York Knicks on Wednesday night looking to square their record before heading out west for a six-game road trip.

New Jersey struggled from the field all night, shooting 34 percent (26-of-77) for the game.

Malik Allen led the way for the Nets with 17 points, on 8-of-14 from the field, and eight rebounds but after that they did not have much. Jason Kidd, Vince Carter, and Richard Jefferson scored a combined 29 points on 7-for-33 from the field. Sean Williams and Bostjan Nachbar scored eight apiece.

LaMarcus Aldridge led five Blazers in double-figure scoring, with 20, and added seven rebounds. Brandon Roy had al ultra-efficient 16 points on 7-of-10 shooting in 30 minutes of play. Joel Przybilla had nine points and 12 rebounds and Portland’s bench scored 43, led by Jarrett Jack (15 points, seven assists), Travis Outlaw (13 points), and James Jones (10 points, 3-of-6 from deep). The Blazers shot 53 percent in the game and 60 percent (9-of-15) from three.

“I’m going to take responsibility because obviously we weren’t prepared,” said Nets Coach Lawrence Frank.

“First step is coming in to compete; Second step is we were inept against their zone; third step is we were very, very poor defensively…To start the game, we weren’t ready to play. We were poor against their zone and we were poor defensively. We struggled guarding high pick-n-rolls and allowing guys to get into the paint so this was a poor performance on everyone’s part.”

The Nets had their troubles executing against Portland’s zone defense.

“We went against zone yesterday in practice,” said Frank. “We didn’t execute and execution falls on me because we played around that zone a lot; we never got in the middle. But just for us to come out like that, hey, it starts with me. I don’t want to take anything away from Portland who has played as well as anyone in the league, but that was an unacceptable performance.”

“We’ve struggled against zone and they sat in zone,” said Jefferson.

“I just think it was a very, very disappointing game in the sense that we never gave ourselves a chance,” continued Frank.

“To have a home game, despite it being against a very good team, you at least want to give yourself a chance. We were out of that game…It’s hard to take when we were noncompetitive basically in that we never really put ourselves in a position to win the game.”

The Nets fell behind 15 in the first quarter and trailed 25-12 at the end of one. Roy scored 10 on 4-of-5 shooting in the quarter; New Jersey shot 4-of-19 as a team. Aldridge had eight.

The Nets mounted a 10-2 run between the end of the first and the beginning of the second to get back within 27-20 but Portland responded with a 16-6 spurt to take a 43-26 lead with 3:02 before halftime. New Jersey got back within 12 with 35.7 on a Kidd three-pointer, his second in a row, but Jack answered with an open three of his own to give the Blazers a 49-34 advantage.

The Nets shot 33 percent in the first half, Portland 51 percent. The Blazers were also 5-of-9 from beyond the arc and had an 11-4 advantage in second chance points.

The Nets shooting struggles continued. They got as close as 10 (53-43) two times, the latest with just under nine minutes to go in the third but Portland reeled off five unanswered. New Jersey came no closer than 11 through quarter’s end and the Blazers took a 68-53 lead into the fourth. Martell Webster scored all six of his points in the quarter. The Nets shot 33.3 (20-of-60) percent through three quarters.

Portland’s lead ballooned to 28 in the final quarter.

“Our goal is to always come out and play good basketball from beginning to end,” said Carter.

“We just need to regroup and get ourselves back together. We know we can do it, we know we can play good basketball. We’ve played with some of the best teams in the league. We just have to be consistent more than anything, do it every night.”

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