Enough Is Enough: The Nets need to stand up and punch the Bulls in the mouth

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The Brooklyn Nets return home from their circus road trip a solid 4-2 and only one-game below .500 at 28-29 tonight to face the Chicago Bulls at Barclays Center.

The Nets have been alternating wins and losses pretty much the entire month of  February after a hot January and just cant seem to string wins together to get above the mediocre line of .500.

The opponent tonight in the Bulls always takes great pride in coming into town and making sure the Nets don’t get to where they want to go.

This is THE game where SOMEONE on the Nets needs to push out their chest and make a stand against the way over-confident Bulls in their own building.

This Chicago team has literally manhandled Brooklyn for the past two seasons and enjoys each win more than the next.

I am tired of seeing Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer smiling and laughing after rejecting a shot against the Nets or making a key stop to make them call a timeout.  Chicago OWNS Brooklyn right now and they know it.  Even the new guys who weren’t even there last season already feel the swagger the Bulls show when they face the Nets like DJ Augustin and Mike Dunleavy Jr. when they also end up toying with the Nets in the two previous games.

It’s sad that the Nets cannot summon up the internal fortitude to hit back at this team and finally make a stand.  I thought the last game in Chicago on Feb. 13th when Joe Johnson, yes Joe Cool, got into it with Jimmy Butler may have created a spark but the game was well in hand by that time so it did nothing in the grand scheme of the Bulls-Nets rivalry.

The Bull shave trounced the Nets twice this season by a combined 33 points and both times Brooklyn has scored less than 80 points in those meetings.

PATHETIC.

What is even worse is that this is coming off  the depleted Bulls running through the Nets in that seven-game series in the first round of the playoffs last season.  They were lucky to be able to field eight players and Noah was completely hobbled but they still knew they the Nets were mentally weak and that they would fold under the pressure.

Brooklyn has done nothing this season against them to show the Bulls that they have changed from that series and that they can run with them even with Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce instead of Gerald Wallace and Reggie Evans.

I was sure that those two hardened ex-Celtics veterans with much swagger would help change the culture in the Nets lockerrom but I was wrong.

Tonight has to be the game where someone goes down hard on the Bulls or a Nets player gets ejected for standing up to the clowning Noah or Boozer or else this Chicago team will go home once again with another win and the Nets hearts in their proverbial pockets.

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