NEW YORK _ The Nets had no business beating the 76ers on Sunday night.
This was the second game of a back-to-back, with tip-off coming about 18 hours after the final buzzer in Toronto. So what if Joel Embiid was out with an upper respiratory illness?
"That doesn't make me feel any more comfortable considering what they did to us last year when that happened," head coach Kenny Atkinson said, referencing the 4-1 playoff series loss versus Philadelphia last season. "They'll play faster, have even more shooting out there. So it's no easy task without him."
If it wasn't an easy task, the Nets sure made it look like one. They did away with the Sixers, 109-89, in a game that was never truly competitive after the first quarter.
The Nets built a lead as big as 23 after Spencer Dinwiddie hit a three-pointer with 6:27 to go in the fourth quarter. Sixers head coach Brett Brown responded by immediately calling a timeout and taking his starters out of the game.
Dinwiddie finished with 24 points and six assists. The highlight of his night was catching an inbound pass and dunking on Tobias Harris early in the third quarter.
"It was cool, you know Tobias is a former teammate from Detroit," Dinwiddie said postgame. "And Kyrie (Irving) was saying I don't have any dunks."
The key to victory for the Nets tonight was this: shoot better than they did against the Raptors and make Ben Simmons beat them as a scorer. Simmons scored 20 points on 7-of-10 shooting, but the Nets limited him to just three assists on the night.
Brooklyn was also able to control the glass with Embiid out. They out-rebounded the 76ers, 52-38, thanks largely to DeAndre Jordan, who came off the bench and grabbed 11 rebounds, including five on the offensive glass.
The Sixers were the team that looked like they had played the day before. Philly looked lifeless on both ends of the floor. They turned the ball over 16 times and shot just 5-of-25 from three-point range.
The Nets bounced back beautifully from an ice-cold shooting night in Toronto, where they shot 14-of-46 from three. The Nets hit 9 of their 24 attempts from deep against the Sixers. They are a team that lives and dies beyond the arc and, like most other teams, are tough to stop when the trey ball is falling.
After splitting their back-to-back, the Nets now hit the road, where they'll play the Pelicans and Spurs this week. They'll return home shortly after to host the Hawks and Knicks next week.
