After a convincing season opener against the Wizards, the New Jersey Nets have dropped their last two games, the latter being a disgusting loss to the Phoenix Suns where they were ripped limb from limb on defense.

“They could really play,” Devin Harris told the Centre Daily Times after the loss. “I mean they pound the ball in and they shot exceptionally well. Sometimes we give them too much of one, tonight we gave them both and you can’t really trade baskets with them.”

Duh.

Aside from the shoddy defensive play however, it’s nice to see now that the Nets have options on the bench and finally have the big bodies to hold their own down low. Now it’s just a matter of getting all those pieces together, working on the same page. Once that happens and guys like Ryan Anderson get more than 16 minutes a game, this team will be right around .500 where they should be.

Things aren’t going to get easier for the Nets tonight either as Allen Iverson will make his debut for the Pistons.

Ask any Net and they’ll tell you too. This is their first big Eastern Conference test this season.

“He’s willing to sacrifice,” Harris told the Philadelphia Daily News of Iverson. “He’s proven that he can still get assists, that he can be that assists guy. He still likes to get his shots up, though obviously that’s one of the things that have to give if they’re going to start him at the point. Playing pick-and-roll with ‘Sheed’ [Rasheed Wallace] and Allen, that’s pretty much a nightmare.”

Simmons has to get going- If this guy is going to get 23 minutes of playing time a game, he has to score more than seven points a game. Overall, he hasn’t looked like the player he was on the Clippers a few years back or even the guy who was solid with the Bucks in ’06. While his confidence doesn’t look completely shattered, it feels like he’s not comfortable yet in the Nets offense.

“I just need to be more aggressive, if it’s putting the ball on the floor getting to the basket, maybe getting offensive rebounds, putbacks, things of that nature instead of just waiting for the ball to come to me,” Simmons told the AP.

Talk about cliché-riddled. Nevertheless, the guy is right on the ball here. If he’s not hitting threes and doing the other things that make him dangerous, mixing it up down low couldn’t hurt, could it?