After a humbling season-opening loss, coach Jordi Fernandez challenged his Nets to show more fight and his stars, Cam Thomas and Michael Porter Jr., to give more on both ends.
He got all of that and more. And it still wasn’t enough, as Brooklyn dropped its home opener 131-124 to Cleveland before a crowd of 17,548 at Barclays Center.
It was a more encouraging outing for the rebuilding Nets (0-2), Year Two into a tank and knee deep into a youth movement. It was, frankly, exactly the kind of game much of their fanbase would want. Competitive. Exciting. And in the end, one step closer to the all-important lottery.
After suffering a 136-117 loss at Charlotte two nights earlier — when Thomas and Porter were a combined minus-38 and were embarrassingly bad defensively — Fernandez demanded more from them.
On Friday, against a much better Cavaliers team that had the best record in the Eastern Conference last season, the Nets stepped up their game.
Thomas had 33 points and nine assists, one shy of his career-high, while Porter added 31 and eight rebounds. The Nets rallied to slice a 25-point third-quarter deficit to just one in the fourth, but fell just short, undone by a defense that allowed 53.7 percent shooting and dug a hole too deep to climb out of.
Brooklyn was down 83-58 with 8:14 left in the third quarter after a 26-footer from Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell, a New York native who had a game-high 35 points on 10-of-15 shooting. The game had all the hallmarks of a runaway.
But unlike Wednesday night against the equally-horrible Hornets, this time they actually gave chase.
They were still down 110-88 after a driving Mitchell hook a half-minute into the fourth quarter when they went on a run.
Rookie lottery pick Egor Demin (nine points, six rebounds) started the spurt when he drilled a 3-pointer off a feed from Porter. The run reached 23-8 midway through the fourth.
A fan ran onto the court with 5:02 left and was wrestled away by security. It didn’t halt the Nets’ run. Demin’s 3-pointer with 3:48 left pulled Brooklyn within 121-120. But they got no closer.
A floater by ex-Net Jarrett Allen — who had 22 points and six rebounds against his old team — stemmed the tide, and Brooklyn could never regain the momentum.
Ziaire Williams finished with 25 points.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
