NEW YORK — It’s not how you start, but how you finish, and luckily for the Nets, their cold start was thoroughly wiped away by a scorching finish in a 145-141 win over the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday night.
Kyrie Irving missed nine of his first 10 shots. Kevin Durant didn’t start heating up until the end of the third quarter. Caris LeVert moved the ball, but he could barely make a shot. DeAndre Jordan couldn’t catch a pass, couldn’t grab a rebound and ended up on the bench the entire fourth quarter.
Luckily for the Nets, their best wasn’t needed early.
Irving shot 7 of 11 in the fourth quarter, scoring 17 points in the final period. In one sequence, he side-stepped into an open 3-pointer, then came back down the floor, split a trap and sent Hawks big man John Collins to the floor, then finished at the rim for an easy layup.
Durant turned defenders into chairs, shooting over them at will. He, too, caught fire late, starting 6 of 15 but making five of his next seven shots. Durant finished with 33 and Irving with 25.
Jordan never saw the floor again: Instead, Jarrett Allen played the brunt of the minutes at the five, finishing with 15 points and 13 rebounds. LeVert never found his shooting stride and also stayed on the bench to finish the game, but he finished with 10 points, eight assists and four rebounds.
The Hawks held the momentum for much of the game. Early on, Trae Young was hard to stop, and the Nets never quite got a handle on Collins, the Hawks big man who finished with 30 points and 10 rebounds. Atlanta is a team that can match much of Brooklyn’s firepower: Bogdan Bogdanovic came off the Hawks bench and scored 22 points, and Danilo Gallinari could have made a difference had he not sprained his ankle three minutes after checking in.
But the difference was on Brooklyn’s bench. After a poor performance in the previous two games, Both Landry Shamet (14 points) and Taurean Prince (12) made each of their five shots, combining for 26 points and four made 3s. Joe Harris was also on fire, netting six of his eight 3-point attempts for 23 points on the night.
The Net reserves kept Brooklyn afloat long enough for their stars to enter the chat. On this night, those stars brought the firepower.
The win snapped a two-game losing streak for the Nets, coming off back-to-back losses to the Hornets and Grizzlies. It also exposed some flaws in a Brooklyn team that hopes to contend for a championship at the end of the season.
Nets head coach Steve Nash said pregame defense was not a weakness, but the Hawks hung 141 points on Brooklyn without Gallinari, one of the league’s premier veteran scorers. The Hawks outrebounded the Nets, 54-40, with Brooklyn’s starting center Jordan registering just one rebound.
Despite finishing with just eight turnovers, several of them were unforced — either due to a shooter not in his spot, or Jordan fumbling a pass. Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, who got the start for the injured Spencer Dinwiddie, shot just 1 of 5 from 3, struggling to find his footing alongside Brooklyn’s stars.
Less than the best was enough to get the Nets through a game against the young Hawks, but the Nets will need to continue refining their product if they are going to travel the long road to a championship. Their next test is a re-do: against the Hawks again on Friday.
