Brook Lopez says this Nets season “more bizarre” than 12-win campaign

Brook Lopez’s second season in the NBA the Nets went an ugly 12-70 (with him as their best player). This wasn’t a team trying to tank for the draft — the Nets got the third pick thanks to the lottery and chose Derrick Favors, who was moved in the Deron Williams deal — this was just a bad team that had Lawrence Frank at the helm as they started 0-18 (Frank was canned after the 16th loss).

Lopez thought things couldn’t get worse than that.

Until this season. The Nets reached a new low point Thursday night when the 3-13 Knicks, their “rivals” from over the bridge, came into the Nets building and dominated the game winning by 20.

So Brook, how does it compare? The New York Post asked.

“I thought I got the craziness out of the way early, I thought I’d be done with it,” said Lopez, pointing back to the nightmare of his second season, the nauseating 12-70 record in 2009-10 when the Nets were a mere 29 games out of the playoffs. “This is definitely more bizarre than that, though.”

So the problem is…

“I don’t really want to blame injuries because I still feel we’re better than a lot of teams we played. I don’t know if it’s chemistry either because I’ve rarely been on a team like this where everyone really gets along with each other and respects each other,” Lopez said. “I don’t know if it’s just energy or what.”

Injuries are part of it — Deron Williams missed training camp and is currently out of the lineup again, as is Paul Pierce, Lopez missed time with an ankle sprain. This team has never really gotten a chance for its starting five to get any chemistry going.

But the bigger issue is they have the worst defense in the NBA. Then Knicks exposed it Thursday. The Nets can’t turn this thing around if they can’t turn the defense around — they look old, slow and plodding on that end. Which they have been.

On the bright side, they should still win more than 12 games this season. So there’s that.