The Brooklyn Nets won for the third time in their last four games, dominating one of the NBA’s hottest teams for a 116-97 win Friday night at Barclays Center.
The Sacramento Kings had won six of eight, posting some of the NBA’s best offensive numbers during that stretch, coming into the first game of a four-game East Coast trip. Sacramento also entered the game fifth in the league in 3-point percentage (38.0) and 10th in 3-point attempts (35.0), but the Nets held them to 4-26 shooting (15.4 percent) from beyond the arc.
It was the second straight game holding an opponent under 100 points for the Nets.
Brooklyn led by as many as 11 points in the first half, pushed its lead to 15 in the opening minutes of the second half, and never let Sacramento back into the game after that.
Spencer Dinwiddie led Brooklyn with 23 points, setting a career mark in scoring at least 20 points for the fourth straight game. Dinwiddie also had seven assists. Over his last eight games, Dinwiddie is averaging 23.1 points and 5.6 assists.
Joe Harris had 22 points, making 5-of-7 3-pointers. Garrett Temple had a season-high 18 points, Jarrett Allen had 11 points and nine rebounds, and DeAndre Jordan grabbed 10 rebounds.
Brooklyn shot 50.6 percent (41-for-81) from the field and outrebounded Sacramento 48-33.
Harris and Dinwiddie combined for 32 of Brooklyn’s 56 points in the first half as the Nets took a seven-point lead at the break.
The Nets were up 26-23 after the first quarter, despite missing 11 of their first 14 3-pointers. Harris fixed that in the opening minutes the second quarter. He made 4-of-5 3-point attempts in the first 4:07 of the second quarter, the last putting the Nets up 43-31.
Dinwiddie scored Brooklyn’s next seven points, and Taurean Prince 3-pointer had the Nets back up by 11, 53-42, on the way to a 56-49 lead at halftime. The Nets limited the Kings to 1-for-11 3-point shooting in the first half.
The Nets opened the second half with a 10-2 run as back-to-back threes from Prince and Temple pushed their lead to 66-51 three minutes into the half. A 6-0 burst midway through the quarter, capped by Allen’s finish cutting to the rim in transition, gave Brooklyn its biggest lead to that point, a 16-point edge at 72-56. They carried that lead into the fourth quarter, leading 86-70 at the end of three.
Brooklyn quickly pushed its lead to 21 points in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, with a Temple 3-pointer and Theo Pinson’s elbow jumper making it a 96-75 game just over two minutes into the quarter.