It was the unlikeliest of wins. The Nets, which had lost its last five games, were sinking deeper and deeper into the Eastern Conference cellar following their embarrassing 108-86 blowout loss to the Jazz at Barclays Center on Wednesday night. Then, a massive snowstorm hit the East Coast, dumping multiple feet of snow on the New York Metropolitan Area and causing the delay of the Nets’ Sunday game at home against the Thunder from the afternoon to the evening.
For that game, which Brooklyn shockingly won 116-106, the Nets were double-digit point underdogs as the Thunder were riding a seven-game winning streak and finally started to round into shape under new head coach Billy Donovan. But, the lowly Nets, with only 11 wins heading into the game, made a lot of shots early on and ended up with a surprising, and much-needed, coast-to-coast win.
The Nets came out with a clear gameplan centered around getting the ball to Brook Lopez against an Thunder starting lineup without a true center (Steven Adams didn’t play due to an elbow sprain). Lopez scored 12 first quarter points on seven shots while Donald Sloan (two threes) and Joe Johnson each contributed six points to a 30-point frame for the normally offensive-challenged Nets.
Instead of blowing their slim two-point lead from the opening quarter in the second, the Brooklyn bench actually increased the Nets’ advantage thanks to some hot shooting from Bojan Bogdanovic, who scored eight second quarter points and made a pair of threes. When Bojan makes his first few shots any given night, he normally gets on a nice roll and has a big game, and tonight was no different as he finished with 18 points.
Up eight at the half, the Nets needed to withstand the eventual Oklahoma City comeback attempt, which threatened multiple times in the second half but never came to fruition. A big reason for that was the Thunder simply missing a lot of makeable shots (Kevin Durant was 2-of-10 from three) but it was also due to Brooklyn’s continued ability to get points right at the rim, mainly with Lopez but also with driving guards. Instead of relying on usually inaccurate three-point shooting, the Nets flipped the script a bit and forced the Thunder to defend the paint, which they didn’t do too well.
But, even when Brooklyn went up 78-65 with a few minutes left in the third quarter, it never felt like the Thunder were out of the game. They held the tide for the next six or so minutes before going on a 8-2 run to cut the Nets’ lead to five midway through the fourth. Serge Ibaka then missed an open jumper that could have brought Oklahoma City within a possession which led to a Thaddeus Young layup, off an offensive rebound from one of his own misses, that increased Brooklyn’s advantage to 100-93 and, for all intents and purposes, sealed away the W for his team. The Thunder just couldn’t make enough shots, or get the requisite stops, down the stretch to push ahead of the Nets. An impressive win for the home team on all accounts.
Some other observations I had from the game: Brook Lopez was incredible, for all four quarters. The issue with the Nets this season has been their inability to establish Brook offensively late in games, but that wasn’t a problem tonight, as he managed to get consistently good post position and, subsequently, high-percentage shots. He didn’t take many jumpers but did make his fair share of creative fadeaways and floaters. His 31 points and 10 rebounds were both team highs and he also blocked three shots. A thoroughly dominating performance through and through….The Nets managed to “hold” Kevin Durant, who is an unrestricted free agent this summer, to 32 points and Russell Westbrook to 27 points. Sure, that doesn’t sound great, but neither of the Thunder’s top two scorers were able to get much going in the fourth quarter and were usually met by multiple defenders when they tried to go to the rim. It was definitely a positive recruiting pitch on the Nets’ behalf….Maybe the most positive aspect of the win was the fact that basically every Nets player, from Joe Johnson to Sergey Karasev, contributed something to the effort. Joe made the de-facto game-winning three with a few minutes left to play that officially put the Thunder away in addition to some nice floaters along the way. Thaddeus Young and Sloan weren’t too efficient from the field, but Thad posted a 14-and-14 double-double (with seven offensive rebounds) while Sloan defended Westbrook well and ran the offense just good enough. Wayne Ellington knocked down some big jumpers, Shane Larkin posted nine points to go with four steals and two (!!) blocks and even Andrea Bargnani made both of his field goal attempts. To top it off, Sergey Karasev made a shot, which is reason enough to say that the Nets were on the top of their game tonight….Six rebounds for Willie Reed in 15 minutes as Thomas Robinson didn’t get off the bench. Also, Markel Brown didn’t play. Robinson had appeared in the Nets’ last 11 games before taking the DNP-CD in this one while Brown had played in Brooklyn’s last five contests. Clearly, Tony Brown has been adjusting his rotations to try and find the right fit, and tonight it worked.
Onto the next one: The Nets close out their four-game homestand on Tuesday night against the Heat.
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