ORLANDO — Cam Thomas and Ben Simmons were out.
Mikal Bridges was out of sorts.
And the Nets were outclassed, embarrassed 108-82 by Orlando before a crowd of 17,708 at the newly renamed Kia Center.
Brooklyn failed to build on any momentum from interim coach Kevin Ollie’s first win the night before in Memphis.
Maybe the Nets (22-36) left all the good vibes on Beale Street. Perhaps they just ran out of gas on the tail end of a back-to-back, playing sans starting guards Thomas and Simmons. Or worst of all answers, maybe they’re just this bad.
Brooklyn trailed by as much as 32 and were dominated on both ends of the floor.
Thomas — out with a sprained ankle that required an MRI exam earlier Tuesday morning in Orlando — is their second-leading scorer. Without his shot-making ability and gravity, Bridges struggled mightily. He had just four points on 2-of-14 shooting, and 0-for-7 from 3-point range.
It was a season-low for Bridges, even worse than the six he had in that infamous Dec. 27 loss against Milwaukee when he logged just a dozen minutes and the Nets essentially either sat or pulled their entire rotation.
Bridges missed his first seven shots and didn’t score until his steal of Jalen Suggs and layup with 9:35 left in the third quarter.
But, fittingly enough considering the way this evening went, he missed the ensuing layup. The score was 68-49, and things just got worse.
On offense, they shot just 39.7 percent overall and were 8-for-32 from behind the arc. A night after handing out an impressive 32 assists in Memphis against just eight turnovers, the offense looked in disarray. Brooklyn had just 19 assists and committed a season-worst 22 turnovers.
Only one other time did the Nets fail to hand out more assists than they gave away turnovers — Ollie’s debut in Toronto, when they had 19 of each.
They would’ve loved even such mediocrity Tuesday.
“Yeah, 30 [assists] is good. We can start that as a baseline. So sometimes that doesn’t happen. We want to make the right plays and we want to fall in love with the process,” Ollie said beforehand. “So some shots, sometimes the shots don’t go in. You can’t control that. But we really want to be consistent on the defensive; that’s one side of the ball you can control. So that’s our biggest focus.”
But Tuesday it was arguably their biggest failure.
The Nets allowed 52.7 percent shooting and a parade or points through the paint. Orlando scored 56 points inside, led by Franz Wagner (21 points, five boards, five assists) and never was made to feel Brooklyn at any point.
It was never close after the opening moments.
Dennis Schroder, starting at point guard in lieu of Simmons, had Brooklyn within two on a pull-up 3-pointer, and a driving hook by center Day’Ron Sharpe made it 19-17 with four minutes left in the first quarter.
But the Nets conceded eight unanswered. Orlando guard Cole Anthony (12 points) hit a free throw to cap the run and make it 27-17 with 2:19 left in the first.
Not insurmountable under ordinary circumstances, but this Nets funk is extraordinary.
Though Ollie, then an assistant under Jacque Vaughn, had given a pregame speech when these teams met Dec. 2 that inspired a lopsided 129-101 Nets victory, whatever he said at halftime Tuesday sparked no such comeback. Trailing 58-44 at the break, Brooklyn coughed up a 20-7 run coming out of the locker room.
The deficit eventually reached 32 before the end of the third quarter. And Anthony’s 3-pointer made it 91-59 with 10:54 remaining in the fourth.
“We’ve got to play with pace. We don’t want to play this half court situation. Like I said, we don’t have these [isolation] players that can do all these things,” Ollie said before the game. “I think we’re better as a unit when playing together, and the guys are cutting and we’re playing unselfish basketball, and I think that’s where greatness starts when you’re unselfish so we want to be a great offensive basketball team.
“And I think it starts now by building those winning habits, and we just got to continue that. It’s gonna be some ups and downs. I’m not gonna say everything’s gonna be perfect, but we have to have a perfect process and perfect mindset to have things happen in our favor.”