Time to hit the road Brooklyn Nets: stats, facts, preview

The Brooklyn Nets (3-4) take their talents on a five game road trip starting this week. It looms as a crucial period in the context of their season.

This will be the first road trip of the year for the Brooklyn Nets. It comes at a good time for the group to build camaraderie and gel as a unit. The trip consists of five games over 10 days, with four highly talented west coast opponents, before a matchup against Chicago on the way back home.

The Nets have a couple of days to watch film, practice, and implement some strategies to alleviate a few distressing aspects of their play. The critical area of concern is turnovers, where the Nets rank dead last in the league with an average of 19.9 per game.

This is a worrying statistic, and head coach Kenny Atkinson confirmed that looking after the ball and limiting turnovers will be a point of emphasis in practice before the upcoming road trip.

"“We’ve got a long way to go, 24 turnovers (vs New Orleans), I’m just glad we’ll have these two or three practice days… Just to run through our offense, run through all our plays, understand what we’re doing and we definitely have some work to do.” Atkinson said. – YES Network post the New Orleans game."

The Nets open up their road trip Friday night with a trip to the Moda Center in Portland to take on the Trailblazers. Brooklyn hasn’t fared well against Portland recently, losing seven of their last eight games against the Damian Lillard-led squad, dating back to the 2015-16 season.

Portland swept last year’s season series. The highlight was a thrilling Blazers double-overtime win, overcoming a gruesome Jusuf Nurkic injury. Despite their success in recent seasons, Portland has started 2019-20 slowly and are currently 3-4. Here is a significant opportunity for Brooklyn to take advantage of.

Next up on Sunday November 10 are the Phoenix Suns. They are the early-season surprise in the west at 5-2. In contrast to Portland, the Nets have great results against Phoenix of late. The Men in Black are winners of seven of their last eight matchups dating back to the 2015-16 season and hold a current three game winning streak.

The Nets have also won their last four games in Phoenix. Therefore the Talking Stick Resort Arena won’t hold any fears for this squad. Devin Booker looms as the player that is capable of breaking this game apart. His current season stats of 26.1 points per game and five assists per game have him in early All-Star conversations.

The Nets then travel to Utah (4-3) to face the Jazz, a team that they have had considerable problems with in recent seasons. Utah swept the season series last year and have won four of the last five meetings between these two squads.

Brooklyn hasn’t won in Utah since February 27, 2016, yes that’s right, nearly four years ago. For the Nets to overcome this hoodoo, they must get out in transition and score points on the break. The Jazz is currently ranked number one in the NBA, allowing the fewest fast break points. Therefore bucking this trend and scoring in transition is a key to Brooklyn winning this game.

Rounding out the west coast swing of this trip are the Denver Nuggets (5-2), who were last year’s second seed in the Western Conference. Brooklyn surprisingly swept the Nuggets last year. They were one of only seven teams to win at the Pepsi Center, which is renowned as one of the most challenging arenas for a road team to win in. Caris LeVert was the architect behind this win, polishing off a terrific all-around performance with the game-winner.

On their way back home, the Nets tip off against a young Chicago Bulls (2-6) squad looking to climb their way up the standings. Brooklyn did hold a six-game winning streak before the Bulls demolished the Nets last February.

Lauri Markkanen

tore the Nets to shreds that night with a 31 point, 18 rebound performance. On paper the Brooklyn Nets should win this one. They will be looking at this matchup as the most winnable game of the road trip.

Brooklyn’s last road trip came in March of last season when they had a seven game stretch (2-5) away from the Barclays Center. The Nets want to go come back home with much better results than they had last March. A 3-2 result should be the benchmark.