NEW YORK — It’s become more apparent each and every game.
Second-year big man Nic Claxton has to play more minutes. He is the Nets’ best option at the center position, as evidenced by his impact in Brooklyn’s 120-108 win over the Houston Rockets on Wednesday.
The Nets are now the No. 1 seed in the East for the first time since 2003.
Claxton is only in his second season and has missed a large portion of his first two NBA years due to injury. His experience, or lack thereof, is a sticking point on a championship contender stacked with veterans.
But Claxton’s athleticism and quick wits have compensated where he lacks tenure. It’s a realization Nets head coach Steve Nash has come to, as well. Coaches put their best players on the floor when it’s winning time, and after playing just nine minutes in the first three quarters against the Rockets, Nash played Claxton the entire fourth.
And for good reason: The budding big man out of Georgia gave the Nets energy where DeAndre Jordan did not. Claxton finished with 12 points and eight rebounds and helped the Nets turn an 18-point deficit into a 15-point lead in the second half. He was the beneficiary of a number of alley-oop finishes from Kyrie Irving, who recorded his third double-double of the season with 31 points and 12 assists.
Meanwhile, Jordan played in 12 minutes and recorded two points and one assist. The Rockets outscored the Nets by 16 in Jordan’s minutes, while they were outscored by 22 in Claxton’s total 20 minutes on the floor.
Blake Griffin also played his best game as a Net: 11 points, six rebounds and four assists, including back-to-back dimes to Joe Harris to balloon the lead into double figures in the game’s final minutes. Griffin made several finishes, including a baseline reverse layup and a put-back dunk, that suggest he is rearing closer to form as the games go by.
The Nets dug themselves an early hole, unable to stop the hot-shooting Rockets, who made each of their first five shots and seven of their first nine 3s on the night. Houston hung 42 points in the first quarter, but it was a rate the team could not sustain the course of a 48-minute game.
The Rockets had no answer for Irving, who dazzled with a flurry of crossover combinations amid his best playmaking display of the season. Irving, however, had to shoulder a bigger load: James Harden only played 27 minutes against his former team before exiting the game with hamstring tightness.
It’s been that type of season for a Nets team with bodies in and out of the rotation for injury or absence virtually every week of the season. They have a young healthy body in Claxton whose play is going to make it hard for Nash to keep him off the floor.
