National Basketball Association

Heading into Game 7, are the Brooklyn Nets running out of gas?

Updated Jun. 18, 2021 7:05 p.m. ET

The NBA playoffs can be described as a war of attrition.

Year in and year out, the last team standing typically has to battle through an 82-game season and anywhere from 16 to 28 playoff games to be crowned champion.

As the Brooklyn Nets are finding out right now, it is anything but easy to complete that quest to grab the golden basketball.

The Nets are preparing to face the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals (8:30 p.m. ET Saturday at Barclays Center), and home-court advantage appears to be the only advantage the Nets have left.

After losing Kyrie Irving in Game 4 to an ankle sprain and having a limited version of James Harden as he tries to battle back from a hamstring injury, the Nets are seemingly ripping apart at the seams.

In Game 6, it appeared as if they had finally hit a wall. Kevin Durant scored 32 points on 30 shot attempts, but it was a far cry from the 49 he scored in a virtuoso Game 5 performance.

It was a sign of dead legs for the Nets superstar, according to Skip Bayless, who went into further detail on "Undisputed."

"He played a full 48 minutes two nights ago, and he was playing extremely high minutes up until the 8:41 mark, and he just hit the physical wall," Bayless said. "He lost his legs. He just ran out of gas."

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While Durant was still able to pour in 32 points, Harden was clearly more impacted as the game wore on.

After playing 46 minutes in Game 5 following a three-game absence due to his balky hamstring, Harden played another 40 minutes in Game 6.

While he was able to score 13 points in the first half, he managed to score only three in the second. He has scored just 21 points in his previous two games and has not been attacking the basket with his usual gusto.

In fact, 14 of Harden's 19 shot attempts the past two games have been from beyond the arc, and as Nick Wright pointed out on "First Things First," that is a sign of lacking burst.

"What is James Harden the best in NBA history at? Drawing fouls," Wright said. "And he can't do that right now because he draws fouls by getting by you and getting into the lane and doing what he has perfected. That is gone with the hamstring injury."

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While Durant might be gassed from carrying a heavy workload and Harden is at less than 100 percent, the greatest sign of the Nets hitting the wall might be the struggles of sharpshooter Joe Harris.

After leading the NBA in 3-point percentage in the regular season, at 47.5%, Harris has gone into the tank against the Bucks, which Brandon Marshall broke down on "First Things First."

After making eight 3-pointers in the first two games of the series to help the Nets take a 2-0 lead, he has made just five 3s in the past four games. The Nets are 1-3 in that span.

Whatever the Nets have left in the tank, it'll need to be emptied in Game 7 – if it hasn't been already.

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