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Nets vs. Warriors: Caris LeVert Was Right on Time

There was no halfway in Caris LeVert’s breakout game on Monday night.

LeVert matched his career high with 29 points and his season high with seven assists in the 119-97 win over the Phoenix Suns that matched Brooklyn’s largest margin of victory this season. LeVert shot 50 percent from the field (10-for-20) and 3-point range (2-for-4) and made all seven of his free throws.

“Great timing,” said Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson. “We needed it, especially with Ky (Kyrie Irving) going out. We needed it. He did it on both ends. The Devin Booker defense was excellent and of course, offensively really, really carried us. So great timing there.”

With Irving sidelined with the sprained knee suffered Saturday in Washington, Atkinson moved LeVert and Spencer Dinwiddie into the starting backcourt together. LeVert began the season starting alongside Irving, averaging 16.8 points, 5.0 rebounds and 4.0 assists while shooting 42.1 percent and 36.1 percent from 3-point range over Brooklyn’s first nine games. But he had been coming off the bench since returning from a thumb injury on Jan. 4. In 14 games, he was averaging 11.1 points on 34.4 percent shooting in 22.7 minutes per game.

Atkinson was confident that a night like Monday was inevitable.

“It’s really just my history with him,” said Atkinson of the player who was drafted in 2016, the first summer of the Atkinson/Sean Marks leadership in the organization. “He’s our first born, right? We drafted him and we’ve seen him play at an All-Star level for stretches, so I know, we know, it’s there when he’s feeling healthy. I will say this in his defense, I think I was super cautious bringing him back in the beginning and should have let him maybe sprout his wings a little more and make a few more mistakes. So that’s a little bit on me, and that was part of the decision tonight. It was like, man, we know who he is, we have to put him out there and play him and play him significant minutes – and that was the idea of putting him in the starting lineup. And I think his comfort level of playing with Spencer those guys, has always been good together. So that was part of it.”

LeVert got rolling with nine straight points to close the first quarter, including a buzzer-beating 3-pointer, that put the Nets up 35-31. They never trailed again. In the 19-2 run that blew the game open in the third quarter, LeVert had five points and three assists.

“He was definitely aggressive,” said Dinwiddie. “Did a good job getting to the free throw line. Obviously, once he caught that rhythm he was hard to stop. You started to see some of that looseness and just kind of shake and bake in a sense back into his game, into his handle all that stuff. So it was a great sight to see.”

In addition, LeVert took a primary defensive assignment on Phoenix’s Devin Booker, who is eighth in the NBA with 26.8 points per game. Booker finished with 11 points on 3-for-15 shooting.

“Phenomenal. He was excellent on both sides of the floor,” said Dinwiddie. “Obviously Booker was what, 3-for-15 right? 11 points? I saw he had a little streak thing going with 30, 29 points thing, so to hold him to 11 and win by 20, I think the difference in the game is the 20 points he normally would have.”

RETURN OF RUSSELL

It’s still up in the air if the Brooklyn Nets will see former teammate D’Angelo Russell on the court Wednesday night when the Golden State Warriors visit Barclays Center. Russell missed Monday’s game against Washington with a quad contusion. More significantly, he’s front and center in trade deadline chatter in the run-up to Thursday’s deadline.

With the Nets adding Kyrie Irving in free agency last season and Kevin Durant choosing Brooklyn, Russell ended up going to Golden State as part of a sign-and-trade for Durant. Russell is leading the Warriors with a career-high 23.8 points per game, shooting 38.3 percent from 3-point range on 9.8 attempts per game.

“His dedication, how he kind of turned the narrative or changed the narrative about him, and he helped us change our narrative, he was a big part of it,” said Atkinson. “Like I said, I’m glad he was rewarded, let’s be honest, with the contract. Going with a great organization like Golden State and a great coach (Steve Kerr), it kind of worked out for both of us. We both felt it was a win-win situation.”

Russell led the Nets to a 42-40 record and a return to the playoffs last season while earning his first All-Star appearance. He led Brooklyn with 21.1 points and 7.0 assists per game and set a franchise record with 234 3-pointers made.

“I think we definitely knocked (heads), but at the end of the day, you could coach D’Angelo,” said Atkinson. “He was open to coaching and he’s one of the most positive guys I’ve been around, too. Just like even when things weren’t going well, he’d almost get uncomfortable when I either got on him or got on others guys more. He didn’t love that. Sometimes it’d strongly kind of overlap: ‘Hey Coach, we’re gonna be all right,’ and he’d clap his hands or be super positive. He’s a very, very positive guy and he’s got a very optimistic outlook on life. I enjoyed it. It was kind of the opposite of me, the curmudgeon New Yorker. He balanced me out.”

ABOUT THE WARRIORS

This is the first meeting of the season between the Nets and Warriors. Things have changed for the Warriors, who have the NBA’s worst record at 12-39 after five straight NBA Finals appearances and three championships.

Aside from Kevin Durant leaving, Klay Thompson has been sidelined all season after tearing his ACL in last season’s Finals and Steph Curry suffered a broken left hand in the fourth game of the season and remains sidelined.

D’Angelo Russell has taken the lead with a career year in their absence, but the Warriors are last in the NBA in offensive rating (104.1) and 29th in field goal percentage (43.2).