It’s hard enough to beat any team twice in a row — let alone a team as good as the Wizards.
The Nets, who had blown out Washington on the road in the first half of a back-to-back set between the two teams, found that out the hard way Saturday night. Brooklyn kept it close, but couldn’t quite muster enough offense to come away with a second win in a row, losing 99-90 in front of a sellout crowd of 17,732 at Barclays Center.
“Obviously they came in a little more desperate knowing we went into Washington and got a win,” Joe Johnson said. “We knew we’d take their best shot today, but I thought we played great. But we couldn’t get stops and we couldn’t really make shots to get us over the hump.
“I thought we fought hard but came up a little short.”
The loss, combined with wins by the Pistons and Hornets, allowed both teams to move within a game of Brooklyn (17-24) for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The Nets begin a three-game Western Conference trip Wednesday in Sacramento.
Saturday’s game was far more competitive than the previous game, but Brook Lopez managed to pick up right where he left off. After spending 20 minutes or so sitting courtside with general manager Billy King following two days worth of trade rumors, Lopez followed up his 25-point second half in Washington with a 13-point first half that helped the Nets take a 51-50 lead into the break.
The Nets increased that lead to 63-56, but an 18-2 run that was capped by a Rasual Butler jumper, gave Washington a 74-65 lead with a minute to go in the third quarter.
The Nets managed to make things interesting in the fourth, tying the game at 81 on a pair of Jarrett Jack free throws with 8:28 remaining. The Wizards responded with a Kevin Seraphin jumper at the other end to retake the lead. Rasual Butler then drove to the rim and made an acrobatic layup following a missed 3-pointer by Mirza Teletovic to give Washington a four-point edge. The Nets never tied it up again.
“We didn’t make shots for sure,” Nets coach Lionel Hollins said of the fourth quarter. “We were just tired. Jarrett played a lot of minutes, and was still trying to come off the pick-and-roll and John Wall was hounding him.
“They just played a much better game tonight, and we played a better game last night.Unfortunately for us, they had a lot more energy.”
Washington’s frontline of Nene and Marcin Gortat, who had been abused by the Nets on Friday, both bounced back. Nene scored 20 points and Gortat had 10 to go with a game-high 16 rebounds as Washington outrebounded Brooklyn, 49-40.
Paul Pierce, in his return to Brooklyn, had just seven points and four turnovers in 26 minutes.
Jack led the Nets with 22 points and eight assists while Johnson and Lopez each added 15. Kevin Garnett was back in the Nets’ starting lineup for a second straight game, marking just the third time in 10 back-to-backs this season he had played both ends. He finished with eight points and 10 rebounds in 27 minutes.
Part of the reason Garnett was available likely had to do with the combination of his playing fewer than five minutes in Monday’s loss to the Rockets before being ejected for headbutting Dwight Howard (which led to him being suspended for Wednesday’s loss to Memphis), then having three days off before the Nets’ game against the Kings.
Bloomberg News reported Saturday that billionaire Steve Cohen won’t be bidding for the Nets after his representatives met with Evercore Partners, the investment bankers retained by Mikhail Prokhorov to explore selling the team. Cohen, a hedge fund magnate, is a minority owner of the Mets.
After buying the Nets for roughly $220 million in cash in 2010, if Prokhorov chooses to sell both his 80 percent stake in the team and 45 percent stake in Barclays Center, he should get several times that much from a prospective buyer.