Jordi Fernández demanded effort from his Nets after they embarrassed themselves through the first four losses of the season.
He got hustle. He got energy. What he didn’t get was victory.
The Nets erased a double-digit deficit in the closing minutes and had a chance to tie before falling 117-112 to the Hawks at Barclays Center on Wednesday night.
Nic Claxton had his best game of the season with 18 points and a dozen rebounds, but missed a pair of late looks. In the end, the Nets stayed winless as they fell to 0-5.
Brooklyn trailed 113-103 with 4:12 left after a Nickeil Alexander-Walker 3-pointer before it made a final rally.
Forward Michael Porter Jr. (game-high 32 points) sank a pair of free throws to pull the Nets to within 115-112 with 1:28 remaining. The Nets had a last chance, but couldn’t cash in on it.
Cam Thomas (19 points, 6 of 20) drove and passed to Claxton in the paint. But the center — who had his first double-double of the season after struggling mightily through the first four games — missed a point-blank look from just 3 feet out with 29.2 seconds left.
Claxton rebounded his own miss, but couldn’t convert the putback. Dyson Daniels snatched the rebound for Atlanta, and ended the comeback bid.
After coming out of the gate by scoring the game’s first dozen points, Brooklyn saw that momentum flip the game just as quickly.
The Nets coughed up an extended 39-15 run to turn a 12-point lead into a 12-point deficit.
Thomas’ free throw put Brooklyn up 12-0 with 9:26 left in the first and sent the Hawks into a timeout. But that momentum wouldn’t last.
Brooklyn gave up an extended run, and by the time ex-Knick Kristaps Porzingis had a tip dunk, the Hawks had flown out to a 39-27 edge.
The Nets’ deficit swelled to 58-41 on Porzingis’ 3-pointer with 3:24 left in the first half. They tried to rally in the second, but to no avail.
Brooklyn came out of intermission and scored the first nine unanswered points. With Egor Dëmin struggling to get by defenders or mount any offense as the backup point guard, Fernández turned to forward Terance Mann to run the attack.
Porter’s running pull-up 3-pointer got the Nets within 70-64 just three minutes into the third quarter. But that’s as close as they got the rest of the way.
With Trae Young out of the game and facing little shooting on the other side, the Nets tried a 2-3 zone. By the standards of their historically bad defense, they did manage to get a few stops — but they couldn’t string enough of a run together to ever challenge Atlanta.
The Nets didn’t even have to face Young after the four-time All-Star was forced out of the game in the first quarter with a sprained right knee.
Young — who entered Wednesday averaging 20.8 points and 9.5 assists — finished with six points in just seven minutes of action against Brooklyn.
The star point guard had been standing under the basket on an inbounds play when Claxton pushed Atlanta’s Mouhamed Gueye in the chest. Gueye fell backwards into the side of Young’s leg, and the latter went down clutching his knee.
Young checked out with 1:52 left in the first and didn’t return.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
