The Nets spent Sunday licking their wounds after failing to complete a home-and-home sweep of the Wizards Saturday, a loss that put them at 17-24 at the halfway mark and with losses in eight of their past nine games.
They return Monday to their New Jersey facility for the first of two days of practice before kicking off the season's second half with a three-game Western swing beginning Wednesday in Sacramento. The Nets have with plenty of work to do if they still want to salvage something from what has been a tumultuous season.
"Well, in the first 41 we didn't win enough games," Nets coach Lionel Hollins said in typically blunt fashion. "In the second 41, I hope we win a lot more."
If the Nets are going to do that, they're going to have to overcome many of the distractions that cropped up over the first 2 ¹/₂ months.
Deron Williams and Brook Lopez have both dealt with injuries and trade rumors, with Williams likely to remain sidelined for at least a week while Lopez was close to being dealt before scoring 26 points in Friday's win at Washington and adding 15 more in Saturday's loss to the Wizards.
Meanwhile, the potential sale of the team by Russian billionaire owner Mikhail Prokhorov continues to hang over the franchise, while the Nets also have to worry about the potential of sending a high draft pick to the Eastern Conference-leading Hawks because the second of two pick swaps as part of the Joe Johnson trade in July 2012.
"It's still a work in progress," Johnson said. "[It's] obviously not what we expected at this point, but we just need to get better and have the team work hard and pull for one another each and every day."
But it will take more than simply pulling for each other for the Nets to remain in one of the final playoff spots in the East. They currently sit one game ahead of both the Pistons and Hornets, and are in the midst of a brutal stretch where 13 of their next 16 games are against playoff teams.
They've been stuck in a season-long slump offensively, ranking near the bottom of the league in offensive efficiency despite a roster full of skilled offensive players. With Williams sidelined, they have just one player (Johnson) hitting more than 35 percent from 3-point range.
Finding a way to hit more of the open shots they're clanging would go a long way toward solving those problems, but there's plenty of evidence to prove that isn't exactly going to be something the Nets can snap their fingers and do.
Still, they remain upbeat they can find a way to get their season back on track despite deserved pessimism from outside the locker room that such a turnaround is possible.
"It's a typical first half of the season, [full of] peaks and valleys," guard Jarrett Jack said. "But, at this point, this is where most teams hit their stride. They pretty much show who they are, and if they're going to be a team worth talking about, worth mentioning as we go into the later stage of it, and I think our group is ready to do that."
Whether they are able to do so, however, remains to be seen.
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