The start was horrific. The bounce-back was historic.
Brooklyn rode a white-hot shooting barrage Sunday to turn an early deficit into a dominant win, a 118-109 victory over Chicago at Barclays Center that wasn’t as close as the final score indicated.
The Nets set a slew of franchise records and narrowly missed an NBA mark, their 11 3-pointers in the second quarter just one shy of the league standard. In the first quarter, their effort had been a joke, but their second turned the game into a laugher.
Brooklyn (8-8) trailed by as many as 21 early, but outscored the Bulls 44-19 in the second quarter, the best point differential in a second quarter in team history. They went up by as many as 16 and cruised from there.
Spencer Dinwiddie led the way with 24 points, seven assists and five rebounds. Royce O’Neale had 20 points, nine boards and career-high tying six 3-pointers, while Lonnie Walker IV scored 20 off the bench.
It was, in short, a team effort. They hit 25 of 53 from behind the arc, the most 3s by a team this season and the second-most in franchise history.
“It hit a point where I was just like, ‘Damn.’ I looked at Mikal [Bridges] after Royce hit a 3 and he was just like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is crazy.’ ” said Walker. “That was very fun as a team, collectively. We found what was working and we just kept it going.”
It was a stunning turnaround. The Nets didn’t have a slow start, they had a full-on face-plant coming out of the blocks. They fell behind 19-3 after DeMar DeRozan [game-high 27 points] hit from deep.
The deficit swelled to 34-13 with 1:51 in the first. But that’s when the Nets used a 33-7 run to flip what had been a 21-point hole into a five-point edge.
“[Told them] just somehow, some way we stay together, not separate. We’ll figure this thing out by the end of this game. So I give our guys a lot of credit for taking that approach,” said coach Jacque Vaughn. “I’ve seen so many games like this, back-to-back, energy was not very high at the beginning, and you lose because you just kind of give up and give in, and this group did not do that.”
Brooklyn started getting more active on defense, getting into passing lanes and causing havoc. The Nets harassed Chicago into 2 of 9 shooting and forced a half-dozen turnovers in that blitz, turning that into early offense themselves.
O’Neale found Day’Ron Sharpe for an alley-oop to cap the run at 46-41, and his 32-footer padded the lead to double figures with 51.4 seconds left in the half.
A switch to a 2-3 zone helped, but what changed the game was increased physicality. Not shockingly, Sharpe was at the heart of that with nine points, nine boards and a staggering plus-31 off the bench.
“Day’Ron turned the flow of the game,” said Dinwiddie.
“Just the physicality. If someone’s doing a backdoor cut, someone’s pushing them, bumping them,” said Walker. “There’s some times where someone’s coming off a pick-and-roll and he won’t get touched the entire time until he gets to the lane. So just that aggressive attention. … That level of physicality was up to [another level] going into the second quarter. … Once one person sees someone else picking it up, it’s a domino effect.”
Sharpe’s free throw made it 97-83 seconds into the third quarter, and they pushed it to 16 multiple times in the fourth, the last at 113-97 with 4:35 to play on a layup by Bridges (15 points, six assists).
Next up is Toronto on Tuesday, with a chance to clinch advancement in the In-Season Tournament if things break right.
“I don’t know all the particular rules. I know we got to win by a certain amount,” said Dinwiddie. “But I mean shoot, who doesn’t like money? Hey listen, half a million dollars: That’ll pay for my Rolls Royce.”
