On one end of the corridors connecting the Barclays Center locker rooms, there were cheers. Boisterous cheers for a team that completed a four-game sweep with its superstar nursing a surprise injury.
On the other end, there were sighs. Dejection. Disappointment for a team that let not one, but two consecutive opportunities slip through its grasp.
The Nets had two chances in consecutive games to upset a third-seeded Sixers team and secure an unlikely playoff victory: First when officials ejected James Harden at the bottom of the third quarter in Game 3 for “excessive” contact with Royce O’Neale; and second, when the Sixers ruled MVP frontrunner Joel Embiid out for Game 4 on Saturday due to a sprained right knee.
They lost both games, including the 96-88 Game 4 loss that ended Brooklyn’s season on Saturday. The Nets have been swept out of the playoffs for the second season in a row.
Meanwhile, the Sixers are likely headed to Boston for a date with the second-seeded Celtics, provided the C’s escape their first-round playoff series against Trae Young’s Atlanta Hawks.
“Arguable MVP, he’s not playing,” said starting forward Cam Johnson. “That’s the frustrating thing about it. This is definitely one that we should have had.”
The Nets weren’t the better team. They couldn’t have been. Not against a Sixers team with as many weapons, with as seasoned a head coach, with this much cohesion, with as lofty aspirations.
The Nets never stood a chance. They limited James Harden to just 17 points on 18 shot attempts and kept series hero Tyrese Maxey in check. After 58 combined points in Games 2 and 3, Maxey scored just 16 points on 20 shot attempts in Game 4.
And yet the Sixers found a way to win: De’Anthony Melton came off the bench and scored 15, and Long Island native Tobias Harris scored a game-high 25 points on 11-of-19 shooting from the field. Starting in place of the injured Embiid (right knee sprain), reserve big man Paul Reed added 10 points and 15 rebounds. Reed had already been responsible for a momentum-swinging set of plays that resulted in a 20-point Game 1 loss for the Nets in Philadelphia.
“Obviously I’m confident in our team and what not, but let’s not get it twisted,” said Nets star Mikal Bridges postgame. “They’re a really good team. That’s something that you can’t shy away from.”
The Nets attempted 37 threes but made only nine, a 24% three-point shooting clip that proved unsatisfactory in the series-ending loss. With Embiid — a dominant rim protector — out due to injury, some felt the Nets should have attacked the paint more and deviated from their three-point shooting mandate.
“I love these last 3 games for us defensively, to hold them to 102 and 96 and 96, you’d think we’d have a chance,” head coach Jacque Vaughn said postgame. “Our chance was to shoot the three ball, and I think, uncharacteristically, you look across the board: It just wasn’t one person.
“Across the board, across the series, we didn’t shoot to our averages, and analytically we always talk about you’re gonna shoot what you shoot. If a guy’s a 38% shooter, you’re gonna more than likely shoot 38%, and we had a multitude of guys that didn’t reach their numbers this series.”
Bridges played in 40 minutes in Game 4, but it became clear he was growing fatigued as the game wore on. The star forward shot just 6-of-18 from the field for 17 points on Saturday. Spencer Dinwiddie was one of two Nets perimeter players to log a positive shooting night.
Dinwiddie shot 7-of-13 from the field for 20 points and Seth Curry — who missed all three of his attempts from downtown — finished with six points on six shot attempts. The rest of the team shot 23-of-61 — or 37 percent — from the field. That percentage plummets when you factor in Nic Claxton, who shot 8-of-10 from the field for 19 points and 12 rebounds.
Players not named Claxton, Dinwiddie or Curry made just 18 shots on 51 attempts. That’s good for 35 percent as a team, save for three players.
“I mean, me, personally, I thought they were all going in, so just bad luck?” said Johnson, who shot 4-of-13 from the field and one-of-six from downtown on Saturday. “I don’t know. It happens. It was just unfortunate that it was across the board today that we just couldn’t get it going.”
The Sixers and Nets will now head in opposite directions. The Sixers hope Embiid can return soon after suffering a sprained right knee in Game 3. The expectation is the star center should be able to return to the court in the middle of next week, but Sixers head coach Doc Rivers was unsure of Embiid’s injury timeline pregame.
The Nets are headed on vacation, then back to the drawing board to build around a team that did some good things during their short-lived playoff run.
Vaughn made sure to reiterate how proud he was of a group that was assembled at the trade deadline postgame.
“I told them they should feel extremely proud when they walk around the borough of Brooklyn,” he said. “We didn’t make excuses this year. We figured out how to stay together. That locker room was together even to the end of the game. I said it’s an opportunity for us to grow from this, to re-establish, to re-energize, to put our culture back in a place where it needs to be going forward, and a lot of guys in that locker room are gonna be part of that.”
The players, of course, still have a sour taste in their mouths after losing a four-game series with two winnable games slipping through their fingertips.
“Getting swept is trash. It’s not a good feeling,” Claxton said. “I wish we could’ve got a win but you always wanna look at the positives. For this team, the organization, to be put in this situation, I thought we did well finishing out the season. We just gotta regroup, figure out what pieces we’ll have here next year, and keep it going.”
“My grandmother said that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades,” said Dinwiddie. “So I don’t know if anybody’s in here for moral victories, but we go into the offseason now, we’re gonna have meetings tomorrow and see what else unfolds. We’re a team that’s in a lot of transition and we’ll see what happens next.”
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