Nets are trey-mendous in win over Bulls
The Nets still have an outside shot at qualifying for the NBA’s Play-In Tournament. But with limited opportunities to strike left in the regular season, they have to start stringing together wins now to have any real hope. Their window of opportunity inches closer to shut with each passing game.
Coming off of back-toback road wins against Toronto and Washington, Brooklyn had a chance to win its third straight game on Friday night against the Chicago Bulls at Barclays Center, something it had not done since knocking off Orlando, Atlanta and Washington Dec. 2-8.
And the Nets (29-45) got it done, 125-108, thanks to a historical 3-point shooting half. They are now 5.5 games behind the Hawks for the final Play-In spot in the Eastern Conference with eight games left.
“We were due for one of these games,” interim head coach Kevin Ollie said. “We were due for one of them. We got some good shooters out there. We haven’t been shooting up to our capabilities. But they just stuck with it.”
The Nets led by 12 points early in the first quarter, not because they were making shots, but because they were doing other little things well. They collected four offensive rebounds in the opening quarter, tallied 10 second-chance points, forced four turnovers and limited Chicago to 40% shooting despite converting on just 34.6% of their own attempts.
It all added up to a plus-11 advantage in field goal attempts early for Brooklyn and a six-point lead entering the second quarter. But its poor shooting was bound to catch up to it eventually, and it did.
The Bulls woke up over the next 12 minutes on offense while Brooklyn went ice-cold for an extended stretch, thanks in large part to increased defensive pressure from Chicago. And Chicago surged ahead by as many as eight points before a scoring flurry from Dennis Schröder kept the situation from getting out of hand.
But the Bulls still owned the second quarter at both ends of the court, as they outscored Brooklyn, 31-20, to take a five-point lead into halftime.
However, the third quarter was a completely different story for the Nets, and that is where they took control of the game for good.
Mikal Bridges caught fire from deep and his teammates — Schröder, Cam Thomas and Dorian Finney-Smith — followed suit. Their collective shot making from distance was the force behind a 17-4 run that gave Nets a 69-63 lead with 7:01 left in the third quarter and the team never cooled off.
Brooklyn went 6-of-7 from deep over the first five minutes of the third quarter after going 7-of-20 in the first half. It outscored Chicago, 39-33, in the third quarter and made nine treys in the period, the second most in any quarter this season.
And the Nets kept pouring it on from behind the arc. They would go on to make nine more 3-pointers in the final frame, which gave them18 makes in the second half and 25 for the game. The 18 3-pointers they made in the second half tied the NBA’s all-time record for 3s in a half. That has been done just five times in league history.
Schröder contributed 27 points and seven 3-pointers. Bridges added 25 points and seven more three pointers, which tied a career high for 3s in a game for him. And Thomas shook off a slow start on offense and finished with a team-high 28 points and five treys.
They became the second trio of Nets to make five or more 3-pointers in the same game all-time, joining Jeff Green, Tyler Johnson and Landry Shamet.
DeMar DeRozan led Chicago with 31 points and eight rebounds.
Brooklyn will try to push its winning streak to four games on Sunday against the Los Angeles Lakers at home.
PURDUE 80 GONZAGA 68
DETROIT — Purdue big man Zach Edey withstood all the abuse Gonzaga could lay on him Friday night, finishing with 27 points and 14 rebounds to lift the Boilermakers to an 8068 victory and move them one win from the Final Four.
Gonzaga leaned on, swatted and grabbed at the 7-foot-4 center — even slapped him across the forehead at one point — but it wasn’t enough to stop either him or his top-seeded team.
On Sunday, Purdue, which last year became history’s second first-round loser as a No. 1 seed, will play the winner of Friday’s later game between Tennessee and Creighton in the Midwest Region.
A win there would land the program in the Final Four for the first time since
1980.
Braden Smith had 14 points, 15 assists and eight rebounds for the Boilermakers, though this game, like most of them for Purdue (32-4), came down to the other team’s inability to hold down the nation’s leading scorer.
“Obviously we’ve always got a place to go with the ball with big Zach,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said.
Fifth-seeded Gonzaga (27-8) gave it a go for 30 minutes, but foul trouble and an ever-shrinking basket ended its hopes.
Graham Ike had 18 points and 10 rebounds for coach Mark Few’s Bulldogs, who shot only 38% over the first 15 minutes of the second half and fell to 0-3 vs. Edey and the Boilermakers over the past two seasons.
Like all Gonzaga big men, Ike spent the evening in foul trouble; he got his fifth and trudged off the court for good with 5:07 left.
Ike got his second foul halfway through the second half while he and Edey tussled in the paint, then jawed at each other after the ref’s whistle. Edey made one of two free throws there, but followed with a couple baby hooks as part of a 10-0 run that made this a 16-point game.
No moment, though, illustrated the frustration as much as at the end of the first half when another Gonzaga big man, Ben Gregg, found himself pinned under the basket by Edey. Gregg flailed and nailed the center with a roundhouse open-handed slap flush across the forehead as Edey dropped in an easy layup.
All par for the course for last season’s AP Player of the Year, who pretty much has a double-double when he gets out of bed in the morning. He recorded his 27th of the season and 66th of his career at the 14:44 mark of the second half. It was part of a five-shot trip down the court that Edey sealed with a jumper in the paint.
Purdue outrebounded Gonzaga 32-25. Edey finished the evening 10 for 15 from the floor and 7 for 10 from the line. He didn’t have a block but made things difficult on Gonzaga from his low spot in Purdue’s zone — altering no fewer than a half-dozen shots in the second half.