Nets' Jack: 'We should be embarrassed'
The Brooklyn Nets don't have anything going for them. Not currently, and not for the foreseeable future.
New York's second-favorite team sits at 7-17, and after dropping a 23-point loss to the Orlando Magic on Monday, starting point guard Jarrett Jack could hardly contain his frustration.
"We should be embarrassed," Jack said Monday, according to Devin Kharpertian of the Brooklyn Game.
"This was us," Jack added. "This was us looking at each other in the eyes and us making sure each one of us is ready to bring forth the necessary effort to win the game, starting with your individual matchup and then collectively us trying to help each other if we have breakdowns on certain scenarios and being able to cover one another."
Veteran leader Joe Johnson gave an even more hollowing answer when asked to address the team's failures.
"I don't really know what the expectations were," Johnson said Tuesday. "I honestly didn't know. It's the unknown. I didn't know. I didn't know how good we would be, I didn't know how we would be as a team. I didn't know. So I just came and done what I was asked to do, just trying to help out."
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As constructed, the Nets may have the bleakest outlook in the league. The current roster is mostly comprised of castoffs and over-the-hill veterans on bloated contracts, and they don't hold control over their own draft pick until 2019.
They're not good now, and they don't project to be for quite some time.
They have decent pieces in Brook Lopez and Thaddeus Young, but those two are hardly making a dent on the bottom line. Prospects Bojan Bogdanovic and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson hold some value, but Bogdanovic has gotten off to a slow start following a promising rookie campaign, and Hollis-Jefferson will miss months due to a broken ankle.
What's left is little hope, little joy, and even fewer fans in a state-of-the-art arena opened just two seasons ago along with the team's much-heralded move to Brooklyn.
Monday's loss, billed as "Star Wars Night," sold fewer than 13,000 tickets for the fourth time in 12 home games. By percentage of seats sold, the Nets rank 25th - a hair above small-market teams in Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee, and the perpetually rebuilding 76ers.
But with all the losing, there was no room to enjoy the spectacle, not even for the league's biggest "Star Wars" fanatic.
"I didn't enjoy tonight," Lopez said. "We could be here a while if I try and name (the issues)."