The gang that couldn’t shoot straight fell on even harder times in the Big Easy Tuesday night.
Cam Thomas’ 0-for-11 performance lowlighted the Nets’ worst offensive performance of the season, resulting in Brooklyn’s fourth consecutive defeat and ninth in 11 contests, a wire-to-wire 112-85 loss at the hands of the New Orleans Pelicans in front of 16,253 fans at the Smoothie King Center.
The Nets (15-19), who went a dismal 12-of-46 from 3-point range in Sunday’s loss in Oklahoma City, clanged in the New Year by misfiring on all but 11 of their 43 shots from beyond the arc against the Pelicans (20-14).
Thomas, who has been relegated to coming off the bench this week despite entering the game as the Nets’ leading scorer, led a season-low 35.7 shooting effort.
The former Louisiana State standout and Southeastern Conference scoring champion certainly wasn’t the only culprit in Brooklyn’s putrid showing.
Reserve forward Royce O’Neale and starting point guard Spencer Dinwiddie combined to go 0-for-12 for Brooklyn, which fell behind 9-0 in the game’s opening stages and never truly competed thereafter.
“We put him in some bad positions, grenade after grenade, late shot clock after late shot clock,” Nets forward Cameron Johnson said in defense of Thomas. “I’m not going to put anything on him. We put him in bad positions.
“It’s a collective thing. His 0 for 11 should go to the team in a sense, where he just had the ball with three seconds left (on he shot clock) and had to force up a shot,” Johnson added. “It’s tough to re-establish a rhythm when you have so many of those.”
Johnson finished with a team-high 17 points, Mikal Bridges added 13 and Day’Ron Sharpe had 12 and nine rebounds for the Nets, who had their lowest-scoring game of the campaign.
CJ McCollum had 16 points and Herb…
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