A sold-out crowd filled the Barclays Center to watch what could potentially be LeBron James’ last game in New York.
They watched King James give the Nets a royal beating.
The Nets were defeated 125-109 by James and his Lakers on Tuesday night before a crowd of 18,248. And it wasn’t as close as the score would indicate.
This was yet another lousy performance from a team that was all too comfortable being blown up and bullied.
“Man, they just came out and hit us in the face, honestly. Lobs, yeah, they just look like the Globetrotters out there,” Ziaire Williams said. “Honestly, it was just quite embarrassing.”
The Nets (13-36) had already suffered a 54-point loss to the Knicks on January 21 and a 53-point loss to the Pistons on February 1, only the fourth team in NBA history with multiple 50-point losses in the same season. They got a 37-point blow to the Clippers, just for good measure.
They trailed by 39 on Tuesday before at least trying to make it respectable, rallying instead of withering. But it was too little and far, far too late.
“Yeah, more of the same. We gotta figure something out,” Nic Claxton told The Post. “Like, this isn’t basketball. We’re supposed to be NBA basketball players. We shouldn’t get beat so much. We shouldn’t fail so often.”
Michael Porter Jr. led the Nets with 21 points and 10 rebounds.
Day’Ron Sharpe had season highs of 19 points, 14 boards and five assists off the bench, while Williams added 17 points on 7-for-11 shooting in his return from injury.
But Porter, their deadeye shooter, went 0-for-9 from deep. Egor Dëmin, their point guard, had a game-high six turnovers. And Claxton was a whopping minus 30.
The Lakers pushed a zone defense and the Nets offense fell into terrible disarray.
“They played zone. It was kind of like kryptonite for us, I would say, the last few years,” Sharpe said. “We lost the ball twenty times and if you turn the ball over like that, you usually don’t succeed.”
James — who has been in the league longer than most of the players in Brooklyn’s starting lineup have lived — was the one who looked young and spry. He had 25 points, seven assists, three steals and sailed in for several dunks before checking out with 8:05 left to loud applause.
If it was the 41-year-old’s last competitive game in New York – and he hasn’t made any statement about how long he will play – it was a solid game.
“It’s obviously LeBron James,” Sharpe said. “But he bleeds just like we bleed, so I’m just really trying to beat him.”
The Nets were the only ones bleeding after the Lakers punched them in the mouth.
They trailed by as many as 39 at 83-44 when Luka Doncic (24 points, six rebounds, five assists) struck from behind the arc with 8:08 left in the third.
It was 111-83 when James checked out with 8:05 to play.
The rest was off time, with a crowd filled with purple and gold-clad Lakers fans cheering for James’ son, Bronny, who scored a pair of late buckets that sent them into a frenzy.
Brooklyn kept pace with Washington, finishing fourth in lottery odds. They are one game behind the Indiana Pacers and two ahead of the sixth-place Utah Jazz.
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