The clock was closing in on three minutes Wednesday night and the Brooklyn Nets were reeling from the Charlotte Hornets' 12-2 run -- really, Kemba Walker's 12-2 run -- that left the Nets trailing by eight. Afterwards, after the two overtimes and the inexplicable fouls and the free throws made and missed, Brooklyn coach Kenny Atkinson would say, "we lost the game three or four times and we just kept coming back."
This looked like one of those spots, and the comeback was courtesy of Spencer Dinwiddie.
The Nets head into Charlotte Friday night for the second half of a home-and-home with the Hornets as winners of nine of their last 10 following Wednesday's 134-132 win. Dinwiddie has been essential to turning the season around, much like Wednesday night's game.
With the Nets down 104-96, Dinwiddie made a top-of-the-key 3-pointer, drove the rim for a basket, then drove and kicked to rookie Rodions Kurucs in the corner for a 3-pointer that tied the game. He later made three free throws to tie the game with 6.5 seconds remaining in regulation, another to tie the game near the end of the first overtime, and then opened the second overtime with a four-point play.
Dinwiddie scored 20 of his game-high 37 points in the 22 minutes of the fourth quarter and overtime, making a career-high seven 3-pointers and dishing a season-high 11 assists.
"At the end of games, Spencer is the guy we're looking to," said Joe Harris. "We're trying to set him up with mismatches. We identify guys before the game who we want to bring up in pick and roll and have Spencer try and make a play for himself or someone else just because he's drawing so much attention him going to the rim. He's great at finishing or giving the ball up. Usually we try to make the right play out of the kickouts."
Over this 10-game stretch for the Brooklyn, Dinwiddie is the team's leading scorer, averaging 24.4 points per game while shooting 48.7 percent overall and 40.3 percent from 3-point range with 6.6 assists per game.
He helped launch Brooklyn's 10-game surge with a three-game string of 25 points against the Knicks, a career-high 39 in Philadelphia, and 27 points against the Wizards. He's done all this while coming off the bench, and currently leads NBA reserves with 18.5 points per game (minimum 20 games) and is second with 5.2 assists per game.
On Wednesday, Dinwiddie became the fifth player since the NBA began tracking starters in 1970 to record 35-plus points and 10-plus assists off the bench, joining Lou Williams, Jamal Crawford, Brian Winters, and Pete Maravich.
"It's a real luxury," said Atkinson last week. "He's basically a starter when you think about the minutes he plays, the important minutes he plays, he's in at the end of the game. He's playing really good basketball."
DEFENDING KEMBA
The quick turnaround against the Hornets means another look at Charlotte guard Kemba Walker. The Nets almost didn't survive their first look on Wednesday. The two-time All-Star has the NBA's highest scoring game this season, a 60-point outing against Philadelphia and was a nightmare cover for the Nets as well.
"I think it's his ability to stop," said Spencer Dinwiddie. "I think that's what's different between him and everybody else in the league. I would probably put him up with Kyrie (Irving) as two of the shiftiest guys. Kyrie probably moves side to side a little bit better and differently than Kemba does in terms of shiftiness, but Kemba stops. He creates that separation because he can move in quick bursts and then literally just plant and stop."
Walker scored 35 points on 13-for-26 shooting Wednesday night, including 4-for-9 from 3-point range. With the Nets up 94-92 in the fourth quarter, he scored 12 straight Charlotte points to give the Hornets an eight-point lead with just over three minutes remaining, sending the Nets scrambling for solutions.
"We just tried to deny him and match up after that," said Kenny Atkinson. "That was the plan. That's not the easiest thing to do, because they're trying to get him shots. But I thought Spencer did a fantastic job denying him and forcing another guy to take the shot."
"Kemba would stop behind the hedge, hit a couple threes and we just decided to be flexible, switch up our defense completely," said Dinwiddie. "It’s something we didn’t really talk about but it was effective for us and froze them a little bit and allowed us to get just enough stops to be able to win.”
Over the final 3:20 of regulation and the 10 minutes of overtime, Walker scored four points.
"The way they guarded me, I don't know if anyone else in this league is getting guarded like they guarded me," said Walker. "It was like a box-and-one. I haven't seen that since I was in college. It was crazy. I guess that's what teams are going to do. I have to trust in my teammates to make plays."
"Box and one, 2-3, we didn't even know what we were in sometimes at the timeouts," said Atkinson. "It morphed into different things as the game went on. We have our base zone, and we just got creative. One thing we knew, we didn't want Kemba to beat us. Yes, there was a bunch of different zones in there."
ABOUT THE HORNETS
The Hornets (16-17) are in sixth place in the Eastern Conference, a half-game ahead of the Nets (17-19) after Brooklyn's 134-132 double-overtime win on Wednesday. Together, they're part of a crowd of six teams with 13 to 17 wins that is holding down the seventh through 12th spots in the conference. The Hornets are ninth in the NBA in 3-point shooting percentage (35.9) and shot 48.4 percent (15-31) against the Nets. Jeremy Lamb, averaging 15.4 points per game for the season, had 31 against Brooklyn. Walker leads Charlotte with 25.2 points per game.