Tonight the Sixers will visit the Brooklyn Nets in the Barclays Center at 7:30pm. The meeting will be the third of the season between the two teams. Both teams are struggling and will be looking to put another win on the board Friday night. Brooklyn has lost three in a row but they do have two three-game winning streaks in their past 10 games.
The Nets (16-19) currently have the second best record in the Atlantic division even with their subpar record. They are coming off an 89-81 loss Wednesday night at home versus the Boston Celtics, another team also struggling to gather wins this season. Turnovers played a major factor versus Boston as the Nets gave the ball away 17 times, while only taking the ball from Boston 6 times on the night. Joe Johnson led Brooklyn with 17 points on 7/16 shooting. Mason Plumlee received his fair share of offense Wednesday night as he accumulated a double-double with 16 points and 12 rebounds. Veteran point guard Jarrett Jack put together a nice night by his standards with 15 points, while veteran and future Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett finished with a quiet 10 points in the loss. Like I said before, turnovers were the Achilles heel for the Nets on Wednesday night leading to their loss to the Celtics. Although the Sixers have also been prone to turning the ball over offensively, they do manage to force turnovers on the defensive end which could very easily cause problems for the Brooklyn Nets.
The Sixers, like the Nets, have been searching and searching for wins but have been coming up empty recently, except for their surprise victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers, 95-92 on Monday. It was a great win for the young roster to possibly grow on, but the team came out on Wednesday and squandered an opportunity to make it two in a row versus the Milwaukee Bucks The Bucks don’t have the greatest talent on their roster but they’ve been playing as a team this season, resulting in wins. They’ve probably been the shock of the league and at 19-18 their positioning themselves nicely for a playoff run. In Wednesday’s game the story was the same it’s been all season for the Sixers. They once again fail miserably to produce points on the offensive end. The shot selection was terrible and when the shot selection is terrible what’s the result going to be? Not too many buckets. They only managed to score 77 points versus a stout Bucks defense and looked like they’ve never shot a basketball before. It was extremely difficult to watch, just like all the other nights. The story is simple for this team. If they make good decisions and take good shots, the Nets are a very beatable team but if they didn’t learn from Wednesday’s effort then we are going to see a similar result. End of story.
Game Notes
- The Nets have won both meetings this season. 88-70 in Brooklyn on December 12th and 99-91 in Philadelphia on November 26th.
- The Sixers shot only 8 percent from three-point range and only 30 percent from elsewhere Wednesday night. There’s not even a word with the ability to describe just how bad that is.
- Brooklyn has won 8 of their last 10 meetings with the Sixers.
- The Sixers are turning the ball over 19.8 times per game, on average, in their last 10 games.
- The Sixers can’t shoot but neither can the Nets. They rank 28th in shooting and 25th from three-point range.
Injuries
Sixers- Joel Embiid (foot), Jason Richardson (knee) and Andrei Kirilenko (personal) are inactive. Hollis Thompson is still recovering from an upper respiratory infection and Luc Mbah a Moute missed the last two games with turf toe.
Nets- Deron Williams exited Wednesday’s game with injured ribs and is out indefinitely. Kevin Garnett is out.
Projected Starters
Sixers
PG- Michael Carter-Williams
SG- K.J. McDaniels
SF- Robert Covington
PF- Henry Sims
C- Nerlens Noel
Nets
PG- Jarrett Jack
SG- Joe Johnson
SF- Sergey Karasev
PF- Mirza Teletovic
C- Mason Plumlee
Prediction: Sixers keep it close throughout the first three quarters but the Nets prevail late in the game. Typical Sixers vs Nets clash. 92-83 Brooklyn.
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