Andre Drummond suggests 'pickup' attitude for Brooklyn Nets

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As the Brooklyn Nets prepare for the final 11 games of the regular season, center Andre Drummond offered an interesting perspective on how he hopes the team approaches the stretch run.

After Sunday's practice, Drummond said that he had to treat it like a pickup. Try to build chemistry while we are out there.

The best thing about our team is that we have guys that have been in the league for a long time. I think we will be able to figure it out with that.

The Nets have been shuffling their lineup ever since a COVID-19 outbreak in December and welcomed a player who isn't vaccine-vaccinated back in January. The team dealt with an injury to star forward Kevin Durant that kept him out for more than a month and a half and made a trade-deadline deal with the Philadelphia 76ers that brought in Ben Simmons and two future first-round picks.

Nets coach Steve Nash said he wouldn't go that far. I understand what he is saying. I talked to the team about this. We don't have time to give away days. We talked to the group a lot about the games.

Nash acknowledged that the Nets are playing against teams that have the benefit of being together a lot longer than the Nets, but he still believes that they can turn things around.

A lot of the end-of-game execution stuff is done by teams with a lot of corporate knowledge. They have been through it before. We do not have that. I think that is what he is saying, that we need to work hard and be conscientious of what is going to help us win games.

As the Nets try to get things in order, they must do so with Irving still unable to play in home games because of New York City's vaccine mandate and waiting and hoping that Simmons will improve to a point that he can play. Simmons is not able to do anything at practice because of his back injury.

Nash is still hopeful that Simmons will play this season.

Nash said he was expecting to have him this year.

Irving was not made available for comment by the Nets.