If you have been following our Nets coverage lately, you’ll know we haven’t been too optimistic about the team. They undoubtedly have their strengths. However, during their hot streak they became overrated, with too many ignoring their weaknesses.

Brooklyn went into Philadelphia and it wasn’t pretty early on. At the end of the first quarter, the 76ers had opened up a 15 point lead. With 8:13 left in the second, that lead had expanded to 20. While the Nets did make a few runs to close the gap at different points, Philadelphia was able to keep Brooklyn at arms length before holding on for the win.

A Rondae Hollis-Jefferson induced spark cut the lead to six late in the second quarter. Early in the third quarter the Nets cut the lead back to six a second time, again thanks to Hollis-Jefferson. After that, it was all Philly. On a night where the bad D’Angelo Russell showed up, Brooklyn was helpless against their superior opponent. If this is a preview of how things will go in the first round of the playoffs, should the Nets even hang on to their spot, Brooklyn will be lucky to steal a single game.

Observations

1. No Answer for Embiid

Joel Embiid came out bombing threes in this one. At the final buzzer, Embiid racked up 39 points on 12/20 shooting, including 3/4 from distance, to go along with 13 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals, and a block for good measure. Brooklyn had absolutely no answer for the behemoth.

As noted when looking at the team’s weaknesses, the Nets perimeter players are terrible at interior defense. If Embiid ended up switched onto a wing, it was essentially a lion mauling a bunny.

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To exacerbate matters, Embiid’s utter dominance exposed a subtle weakness of Brooklyn’s, the interior defense of their bigs. While Jarrett Allen is good for a highlight reel block on a nightly basis, him and Ed Davis don’t provide high quality interior defense. Among other big’s that have logged at least 1,500 minutes this season, Allen sports a C- interior defense grade while Davis is a C, according to our grading system.

Overall, the Nets’ interior defensive impact produced by their bigs lands the team somewhere around the 45th percentile league wide.

Atkinson seems to have realized that his bigs just couldn’t hang. Allen and Davis combined for 22 minutes, with Allen logging only nine.

2. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson the Catalyst

As mentioned above, it was RHJ that sparked an attempted comeback after falling behind by 20 in the second quarter. This is notable for two reasons. First, RHJ has functionally fallen out of the rotation recently. In the Nets past 16 games, Hollis-Jefferson has made only eight appearances. Three times in those eight appearances RHJ failed to log even 10 minutes.

Secondly, this is now the second instance where RHJ did spark a comeback. While this one was ultimately unsuccessful, Hollis-Jefferson played an instrumental role during the Nets absurd 25 point fourth quarter rally to beat Sacramento earlier this month.

Hollis-Jefferson entered the game with 6:36 remaining in the second quarter, with Brooklyn trailing 48-31. RHJ then scored the Nets’ next six points in just under a minute. He added another quick six points with under two minutes remaining in the half as well.

Hollis-Jefferson finished with 19 points and 10 rebounds, and perhaps earned his way back into the rotation.

3. D’Angelo Russell

The bad D’Angelo showed up in Philadelphia. His final stat line was 13 points on 6/19 shooting, including 1/5 from deep, to go along with eight assists and seven (!) turnovers.

While everyone is entitled to an off night, this is what Russell looked like when he was struggling each season of his career before this year. Forcing shots, forcing passes, horrible inefficiency, and too many turnovers.

Despite the All-Star nod, Russell’s hype train went a little off the rails earlier in the year. It coincided with the Brooklyn hype train going off the rails. It made for an interesting story for media members. The issue is the story was always being seen through rose colored glasses.

Questions

1. Headbands

There was a headband brigade in this game. And not the normal headband meant to catch sweat or cover up a receding hairline (cough*LeBron*cough). No, real headbands made of cloth that you tie in the back as if you were a performing mixed martial arts.

Embiid, Jimmy Butler, Allen, DeMarre Carroll, regional manager Michael Scott, and Hollis-Jefferson all took part in the fashion quirk.

Why?

2. Can the Nets rebound?

While the schedule won’t be lightening up, Brooklyn just finished a 17 day, 7 game road trip, with 6 of those games coming out west. The team went 2-5 on the trip. Four of the team’s final six games are at home, including the next three.

Can the Nets rebound with some home games and salvage their playoff spot?

Prediction

Brooklyn is in trouble

While not a declarative statement as to whether or not the team will make the playoffs, they’re in serious trouble. With six games left, fivethirtyeight is still giving the Nets a 79% chance of making the playoffs. While their math is trustworthy, that intuitively seems too high. While this will assuredly sound like an unabashed plug, Jacob Goldstein’s 63.4% odds seem much more accurate.

Brooklyn, currently the seven seed in the East, is enjoying a one game lead over the Magic for the ninth seed. In between the two are the Heat, who are a half game behind the Nets. Brooklyn also trails Detroit by a half game for the six seed, while the Hornets are in 10th, 2.5 games behind Brooklyn.

Put simpler, five teams vying for three playoff spots are separated by three games. Brooklyn is only one game up on missing the playoffs. Not only do the Nets have the most difficult remaining schedule of the five, they have the most difficult remaining schedule in the league, and it isn’t close.

The forth coming three game home stand eluded to earlier sees the Nets take on the Celtics, Bucks, and Raptors. Woof. Then Brooklyn goes on the road to Milwaukee and Indiana, before playing Miami in Brooklyn for the season finale.

Hitting “load management” luck against superior teams locked into their seeding may end up being what backs the Nets into the postseason.