Nets continue road troubles, fall to Raptors

The Brooklyn Nets fell to the Toronto Raptors 116-104 on Tuesday night for their 10th straight road loss.

After this defeat, the Nets fall to 1-13 in games played outside of Barclays Center and 7-20 overall on the season. Brooklyn is tied with Dallas for the second worst record in the league and trails only Philadelphia's league-worst record of 7-21.

During Tuesday's game, the Nets kept the game close in the second quarter, trailing 47-43 with 4:34 left. Toronto subsequently closed out the half on a 17-3 run to lead 64-46 going into the break.

In the second half, the Raptors stretched the lead to as many as 23 to put the game out of reach.

"Transition defence. I was upset at halftime. I told the team that our inability to get back on defence just wasn't good enough," said Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson after the game. "You can miss the shots, you can turn it over but I thought we didn't get back."

Toronto forced Brooklyn to commit 17 turnovers in the game, resulting in 24 points. Nine of them came in the second quarter.

Atkinson was missing All-Star center Brook Lopez, who is leading the team in scoring (20.3 per game), blocks (1.8 per game) and minutes played (28.8 per game).

"We miss a lot of things besides his rim protection. Brook gives us so much. He's dynamic in a lot of different ways," said point guard Jeremy Lin following the game. "If he's not here, everyone has to step up and we just didn't play hard enough."

One element of Lopez's game that is aiding Brooklyn this season is his outside shooting. Prior to the game, he ranked third in the team in three pointer field goals made with 44, trailing Joe Harris (47) and Bojan Bogdanovic (45). Entering this season, Lopez had attempted a combined total of 31 three pointers in his first eight seasons.

During the game, the Nets were 10-for-35 (28.6 percent) from beyond the arc, compared to their season average of 11.0-for-33.3 (33.1 percent).

"I thought we had a ton of open looks. We have to make them, we have to make sure the right people are shooting them," said Atkinson. "We embrace the open three-point shot, we keep embracing it. Just got to make more of it."

Despite the poor record, Atkinson is pleased with the progress his team has made in his first year as head coach.

"I just love the group and I like their resiliency," he said prior to the game. "I enjoy coming to work every day with this group. They work extremely hard despite some tough losses."

"It's a competitive group and I think they're improving and buying into the process of what we're trying to do," Atkinson added. "Despite our record, I'm pleased with the progress and pleased with the group." Endit