Game 54 Recap: Nets 111, Kings 99

The streak shall live! After yet another poor first quarter which left the Nets down by nine points at the 3:50 mark, they played incredibly inspiring ball the rest of the way and basically blew out the Kings, who did put up a fight late in the fourth quarter. The Nets started tonight’s game with the exact same lack-of-effort and intensity as they did against Golden State but like Friday’s game, they pushed through those doldrums and ended up with a very convincing win.

In very non-Nets fashion, the kick-starter for their rally which culminated in the win was actually defense. Sacramento scored a ton of points, 35, in the first quarter but were held to nearly that amount, 41, over the next two quarters. The Nets turned up the defensive pressure on the Kings and that ended up shooting New Jersey onto an offensive explosion that turned this game from a close barn-burner into a 19-point blow-out.

Tonight, the main offensive cog for the Nets was Anthony Morrow who definitively broke out of his recent slump with a 24-point game on the power of six 3-pointers. Gerald Wallace continued to live up to his nickname of “Crash” by flying around the court, hitting jump-shots, making contested lay-ups, grabbing rebounds over Kings players, making key steals, and even the occasional block. If it wasn’t clear before, Wallace is a serious player and is a lot more underrated that I thought he was.

In other news, D-Will still hasn’t found his shot and was only 6-17 from the field for 19 points to go along with 15 assists. It’s good to know that when Deron knows his shot isn’t there in a certain game, he puts on his distributor cap and racks up assists better than basically every NBA point guard. Also, Johan Petro started the game at center and, wait for it, actually helped the Nets win. The 7-foot Frenchman scored 12 points on 6-9 shooting in just 19 minutes. Not an April Fool’s Joke, I swear.

Some other observations I had from the game: Marshon Brooks was a major nonfactor in the game and only played 17 minutes, tallying just four points. His rapid fall from fame is shocking and even though he played well in Oakland, he’s just not the same guy he was earlier in the season…Kris Humphries had a double-double with 14 points and 12 rebounds. Just another day at work for Hump who keeps putting up solid numbers without garnering a whole lot of attention…Gerald Green is indeed human, shooting 2-9 and scoring six points in total. He did have seven rebounds too so he is a notch above humans but not as much as previously believed…Former Nets Travis Outlaw and Terrence Williams didn’t show much for the Kings, combining for just 10 points on 5-12 shooting in 38 minutes…Jimmer Fredette really doesn’t do anything else on a basketball court other than shoot threes. Not sure why he was chosen in the first round of this past NBA draft. 

The Nets get a much deserved two-day break before they head south to take on the Los Angeles Kobe Bryants in Southern California on Tuesday night.