Nets undone in no good, ugly preseason night: Gotta do better

PHILADELPHIA — The Nets have somewhat overcome shaky shooting this preseason by being crisp and hard-working.Wednesday is what happens when their effort and ballhandling take a night off.The Nets suffered a 117-95 preseason loss to Philadelphia at Wells Fargo Center that had new coach Jordi Fernandez vexed, a performance that he said flat-out wasn’t good enough.They faced a Philadelphia team playing without All-Stars Joel Embiid and Paul George.And the Nets came in leading the preseason in fast break points and third in assist-to-turnover ratio, thanks to selfless ball movement.But that had been with Ben Simmons playing alongside Dennis Schroder.

With Simmons out (a scheduled day off to manage his recovery from surgery), it left Schroder shouldering all the playmaking duties, and being found wanting with nine points just four assists and five of the Nets’ 20 turnovers.“We weren’t strong with the ball, we didn’t move the ball.It’s fairly simple.

We didn’t do what we were supposed to,” Noah Clowney said.“We turned the ball over, they leaked out, they got buckets off it.

But I’m not gonna blame it on us missing guys.We gotta do better with the group we got.”Worse yet, they didn’t get back in transition and saw the 76ers turn those miscues into 31 points.

A talent-starved team can’t afford that once the season starts.“We went from two point guards to one; that showed in taking care of the ball.But the reality is our true point guard Dennis had five turnovers,” Fernandez said.

“We cannot afford him to play like this, because he’s a really good playmaker, he’s a floor general, he does the right thing.So he has to be better.“Obviously adding another point guard will help us.

But the reality is 20 turnovers for 31 points is unacceptable.When turnovers happen you’ve still gotta keep playing.

You’ve still got to get stops.And obviously in that second half, I feel like we didn’t play as hard as we could, like we’ve done t...