The Brooklyn Nets came up short in two overtimes in Portland on Monday night, dropping a 148-144 final to the Trail Blazers.
The Nets held a 10-point fourth-quarter lead before the Blazers inched back and tied the game with 3.5 seconds remaining. D'Angelo Russell forced a second extra period with his basket with 8.8 seconds to go in the first overtime, but the Blazers scored the first seven points of the second overtime to take a 139-132 lead with less than a minute remaining.
Brooklyn made it a single-possession game on a Joe Harris 3-pointer that cut it to 143-140 with 36.2 seconds remaining, but the Blazers connected on their free throws to close the game out.
Russell led the Nets with 39 points — his third 30-point game in Brooklyn's last four — plus nine rebounds and eight assists. Dinwiddie had 22 points, DeMarre Carroll had 18 and Caris LeVert scored 16 with seven assists.
Jared Dudley scored 15 points, Harris had 13 points and eight rebounds, Jarrett Allen scored 10 with eight rebounds and Ed Davis grabbed 14 rebounds in his return to Portland.
The Nets went into halftime tied with the Blazers at 62 after a nip-and-tuck second quarter.
Portland had the biggest surge of the first half with a 15-2 run in the first quarter that took the Blazers from a six-point deficit to a 25-18 lead and ultimately a 31-27 advantage at the end of the first quarter.
The Blazers had their biggest lead of the second quarter at 33-27 after Zach Collins scored in the paint 30 seconds into the quarter. But Dudley followed with a four-point play for the Nets, who soon after had the game tied at 35. That was the first of four ties in the second quarter.
The Nets went up 60-59 on a Dinwiddie 3-pointer with 42.9 seconds to go in the quarter, but Seth Curry matched it for Portland. Two LeVert free throws with 20.8 seconds remaining tied the game at 62.
By the middle of the third quarter, the game had seen 10 lead changes and eight ties. With an 8-2 run, the Blazers matched their biggest lead of the game to that point, 95-88. Davis closed the quarter with two free throws to make it a 95-90 game going into the fourth. That was the start of an 8-0 run that carried into the fourth and was capped by two Dinwiddie baskets to wipe out the deficit.
Dinwiddie ended up scoring eight points in the first five minutes of the quarter as the Nets turned a five-point deficit into a six-point lead with seven minutes to go.
But Brooklyn wasn't done there. After Enes Kanter scored for Portland, the Nets rattled off another six in a row from Davis, Russell and LeVert, extending it to a 22-7 quarter-opening run and going up 112-102 midway through the quarter.
Portland chipped away at that lead, closing within a point on two Damian Lillard free throws with 1:13 remaining. The Nets were up 120-117 after Allena and Russell each made 1-of-2 from the line. A Lillard drive got the Blazers within 120-119, and after a Russell turnover Curry made 1-of-2 from the line with 3.5 seconds to go to send the game to overtime.
In the first overtime, Dinwiddie's 3-pointer tied the game at 128 with 1:29 to go and the Nets and Blazers traded scores from there, with Russell's drive knotting the score again at 132 with 8.8 seconds to go.
UP NEXT
The Nets wrap up their seven-game road trip in Philadelphia on Thursday. They'll be back in Brooklyn on Saturday to host the Boston Celtics at Barclays Center.