Nets at Spurs
After facing two of the worst two teams in the NBA in his first two games as interim coach of the Brooklyn Nets, P.J. Carlesimo will see the competition ramp up considerably when his club visits the San Antonio Spurs on Monday. The Spurs have won five straight overall and eight in a row at home in building up the third-best record in the NBA. The Nets have faced two teams with a combined record of 14-48 since firing Avery Johnson.
Brooklyn took on a lot of salary by bringing in Joe Johnson and signing Deron Williams, Brook Lopez and Gerald Wallace to long-term contracts over the summer. A terrible stretch at the beginning of December with that lineup proved to be the undoing of Avery Johnson. Veteran Carlesimo reportedly will be around for a while as the Nets attempt to turn things around. San Antonio is in its customary place near the top of the Western Conference and is 12-2 at the AT&T Center.
TV: 7 p.m. ET, YES (Brooklyn), FSN Southwest (San Antonio)
ABOUT THE NETS (16-14): Brooklyn general manager Billy King said in an ESPN radio interview on Sunday that he had not contacted any high-profile coaching candidates. “We’ve put our support behind (Carlesimo), and then we’ll look at things and evaluate it later,” King said. Carlesimo guided the Nets to a 97-81 win over the Charlotte Bobcats on Friday and a 103-100 triumph over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday by leaning on Lopez. The center has posted three straight double-doubles and went for a season-high 35 points in the win over Cleveland. Williams has recorded a total of nine assists and only one turnover in the two games under Carlesimo.
ABOUT THE SPURS (24-8): San Antonio crushed the Dallas Mavericks 111-86 on Sunday night and has won its last five by an average of 18.8 points. The Spurs got 84 points from Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker and Tim Duncan in a win over the Houston Rockets on Friday, and the three went for 59 in the victory on Sunday. With Monday being the second night of a back-to-back set, and with another back-to-back scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, coach Gregg Popovich could get creative with his substitution patterns in regard to those three players in particular. Parker was the only one to go over 30 minutes on Sunday and led the team with 21 points and nine assists.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. San Antonio has taken nine of the last 10 in the all-time series.
2. Brooklyn F Kris Humphries (abdominal strain) has missed the last two games and is questionable for Monday.
3. Spurs G Danny Green is 16-of-22 (72.7 percent) from 3-point range over the last four games.