The Golden State Warriors brought the NBA’s best record into Barclays Center on Thursday evening, and the 24 minutes that they lived up to that mark were enough for them to race past the Brooklyn Nets in the second half as Brooklyn suffered a 117-101 loss.
The Nets built a 16-point halftime lead, shooting sharply and pushing the ball in transition off defensive rebounds as the league’s highest-scoring team struggled to find the bottom of the net.
The Warriors are one of the top defensive units in the league, leading the NBA in defensive rating, steals and 3-point field goal defense and ranking third in overall field goal percentage. But they gave up 65 first-half points to the Nets, who shot 48 percent from the field and 45 percent from 3-point range in building their 65-49 lead.
Lopez had 23 points in the first half, at one point in the second quarter scoring 11 straight Nets points that lifted Brooklyn to a 61-47 edge with 4:17 to go in the half.
Ronda Hollis-Jefferson scored 11 in the half, Bojan Bogdanovic added 10 and Jeremy Lin had eight assists.
“We knew we had to come out and try to hit first because of the kind of team they are,” said Lopez. “Obviously they have a lot of firepower. They play very well together, so we knew had to be aggressive.”
But the second half was an entirely different story.
Golden State scored the first 12 points of the third quarter and stretched that into a 24-5 run that covered the first half of the quarter and erased the Nets’ lead, putting the Warriors up 73-70.
“They turned up their intensity,” said Nets coach Kenny Atkinson. “They turned up their energy. They were really aggressive on the defensive end and then we have to do a better job of protecting the ball. Obviously that was kind of the story there.”
In taking an 88-84 lead into the fourth quarter, the Warriors shot 14-of-23 overall and 6-of-10 from 3-point range in the third quarter after the Nets held them to a dismal-shooting first half. The Nets were punished more for turnovers than poor shooting in the quarter, turning it over 11 times — the Warriors had eight steals in the quarter — on the way to 26 total turnovers for the game.
“We turned the ball over a good amount as a team and that just gave them a lot of opportunities in transition,” said Lopez. “They’re the best team in the league in transition and we’ve got to take away those easy ones, they get enough easy ones because of their talent.”
The Nets were still within 92-88 three minutes into the fourth before the Warriors pulled away.
Lin, who missed 18 of 19 games through November and into December, made his second straight start in just the eighth game this season he and Lopez have played together. Lin extended his string of scoring in double figures in every game he’s played, and matched his season high of 11 assists for his second double-double of the year.
“It’s nice having him and Brook back together in the lineup,” said Atkinson. “I think the more they play together, the better all this goes. I don’t want to put the turnover blame on lineups jumping around, but it’s part of it. I just feel like we need to get hopefully back to a stable lineup, stable rotations. I think that’ll help us.”