ATLANTA _ Nothing is easy for the Nets lately, but after allowing the Hawks to hang around right down to the wire, they pulled out a 110-105 victory by scoring the final six points to snap a three-game losing streak Friday night at Philips Arena. Spencer Dinwiddie scored four straight points in that finishing stretch and finished with 20 points, 10 assists and nine rebounds to miss a triple-double by one board.
Jahlil Okafor had his most efficient outing as Net, scoring six points in a 9-0 run early in the fourth quarter for an 85-80 lead. Okafor totaled 17 points in 12 minutes, He shot 6 for 8 and had 11 points in the fourth quarter. But he went to the bench with 5:26 to play and the Nets trailing 92-88.
The Nets scored six straight points to take a 94-92 lead on a dunk by Rondae Hollis-Jefferson at the 3:48 mark, but once again, they couldn't hold it as the Hawks grabbed a 99-94 advantage on a three-point play by Dennis Schroeder followed by a 3-point jumper by Dewayne Dedmon.
A 7-2 burst by the Nets gave them a one-point lead on a three-point play by Hollis-Jefferson with 1:12 left, but two foul shots by Kent Bazemore restored a 105-104 Hawks lead. Quincy Acy committed a turnover that gave Schroeder the chance for a layup, but he missed and Dinwiddie rebounded and drove the length of the court for a layup only to miss the foul shot that followed. Dinwiddie alertly rebounded his miss, was fouled and made two shots for a 108-105 lead with 9.1 seconds to go.
That finally got the job done. The Nets (16-26) had four other players in double figures, including Hollis-Jefferson (14), DeMarre Carroll (13) and Allen Crabbe and Joe Harris with 10 points each. Schroeder scored 34 points for the Hawks (11-31), and Bazemore added 16, but they committed 18 turnovers leading to 33 Nets points.
The Nets made clear strides forward in the first half of the season, but even so, their record was a bit of a letdown after they scored wins over some top competition only to end the first half on a three-game losing streak. Dinwiddie, who is in the midst of a breakout campaign after taking over for injured Jeremy Lin and D'Angelo Russell as the starting point guard, noted that the Nets played solid offense for the first 20 games and then played strong defense for the past 20 or so games.
"We have to put the two halves together to be a more productive ballclub on the wins total," Dinwiddie said. "But if you're talking about improvement from last season, it's fairly obvious. We play competitively with the top teams in the league pretty much every single game outside of maybe five or six games, and then, we also have more wins than we did until like March (23) last year."
As for what might be possible in the second half, especially with the pending return of Russell following arthroscopic knee surgery, Dinwiddie said, "I think something like the Miami Heat last year when they went on that run comes to mind. You can't guarantee or predict anything like that, but you would certainly hope that when healthy and we start to click and gain chemistry that we could start to do something of that nature and not just have an improving season but to have a really successful season."
Coming off a horrible blowout home loss to Detroit, the Nets did show improvement on offense in the first half, making 10 of 21 3-pointers to grab a 53-50 lead. But they still were bothered by turnovers, and they were allowing the Hawks to hang close based on their rebounding and scoring in the paint.
The Nets opened the third quarter with a 13-6 run, including five points from Dinwiddie, to take their biggest lead to that point at 66-56. But the Hawks responded with an 11-0 run to take their first lead at 67-66 on a 3-pointer by Tyler Dorsey. The third period ended with the teams tied at 74 as the Nets continued to let the Hawks off the hook.
