Compared to their first two meetings with the Washington Wizards, Sunday night’s 113-106 win had a tame finish for the Brooklyn Nets.
That still meant holding things together after Washington cut a 14-point deficit to one with three minutes to go.
Leading 103-102, the Nets closed the game out with a 10-4 run, with Nic Claxton converting a pair of three-point plays on dunks off feeds from Kyrie Irving, and Irving knocking down four of four free throws.
That finished off a topsy-turvy game in which the Nets trailed by 14 points in the early going before building that 14-point lead of their own.
“I think we just got enough stops,” said Nets head coach Steve Nash. “They’re a tough team for us to cover. We’d like us just to take that next step, but if you really look at the game, we gave up 20 points in the first five minutes, so thereabouts, we held them to 86 in 43 minutes. So pretty good when you take a step back and look at it. Our defensive intensity was there. They went on their run, maybe a couple of mistakes to allow them back in it late, but cleaned it up, got the stops, got the rebounds, and made a couple buckets down the stretch to finish it off.”
The Nets improved to 29-14 after winning for the 15th time in their last 17 games.
Irving led Brooklyn with 28 points, plus seven rebounds, six assists, and three steals, while James Harden had 26 points, eight assists, five rebounds, and three steals.
Claxton finished with 16 points and three blocks, DeAndre Jordan scored 12, and Joe Harris added 10.
Blake Griffin made his Brooklyn debut and played 15 minutes, with the Nets plus-12 during his time on the court, a team-high.
“First game, he looked comfortable,” said Harden. “We tried to get him shots and tried to get him involved. Blake is going to be very key for us just because he’s versatile, he creates mismatch problems and he’s a very good passer. Once we find sets that can incorporate him and that he can look for consistently and he can be prepared for, then, we’ll be that much better. But I think for his first game just learning on the fly without really any practice time, he did a good job.”
The Nets quickly fell behind 20-6 and were trailing 25-14 before an 8-0 run. Landry Shamet hit a 3-pointer and Bruce Brown scored twice inside before grabbing a loose rebound and setting up Claxton for a lob that brought the Nets back within 25-22 before they went into the second quarter down 30-25.
They kept rolling to start the second quarter with nine straight points from Harden in moving into the lead. The Nets went on to make 10 of their first 12 shots in the second quarter and Brown made another quick impact with two scores sandwiching another lob to Claxton for a transition dunk. That little run put the Nets up 52-38, and at that point they had outscored the Wizards 46-18 after they had initially fallen behind by 14. Irving scored Brooklyn’s final nine points of the half as the Nets went into the break leading by 63-56.
“I said to the second unit, five minutes into the first quarter, we’re a little flat,” said Nash. “We need you guys to come in hungry and with a lot of energy and they did. They came in, they were really active, lot of energy, lot of spirit and turned the game around. The starters have a lot on their plate. It’s a condensed schedule. They’re not going to come out with a ton of emotion every single night, so tonight was one of those nights where they needed a boost from the reserves and those guys gave it to them and the starters were able to finish the deal.”
With the Nets leading 88-83 after three quarters, Griffin opened the fourth quarter with a dunk, Harden scored, and a Harris 3-pointer extended the Brooklyn lead to 95-85. But with that lead at 11 points, the Nets surrendered a 10-2 run that brought the Wizards within 101-98 with 4:29 remaining.
After Russell Westbrook’s drive made it a 103-102 game, Claxton answered with a three-point play on the other end for a 106-102 lead and Irving’s two free throws with 1:17 remaining put the Nets up 108-102.
Washington cut that lead to 108-106 with 44.6 seconds to go, but again Irving found Claxton underneath for a finish, and the three-point play made it 111-106. Irving’s two free throws with 3.2 seconds left closed it out.
“They just play with a lot of pace,” said Harden. “They’ve got two guards that push the ball at a high level and that put pressure on that rim and some of their guys were knocking down shots. We just didn’t do a great job at loading up and getting back in transition, but then again, they only had 23 points in that fourth quarter. So that’s pretty solid. It was mostly that first five minutes of the game when we gave up 20 points. After that, we held them to 86 or something like that, so, it was pretty solid for the rest of the game.”