BALANCE SWEET
Nets win home opener behind six players on double figures
The Nets already lost Jeremy Lin. They made sure they didn’t lose their home opener.
Hours after their floor leader had season-ending knee surgery, the Nets held off the Magic 126-121 at Barclays Center before a crowd of 16,144 — including owner Mikhail Prokhorov.
After The Post had reported Prokhorov is close to selling at least a 49 percent share of the team, he declined comment on the matter as he left the building.
He only said “I’m still alive.” And his team has life post-Lin, rallying from behind at the start of the fourth quarter, and fighting off a Magic rally at the end of it.
And when Evan Fournier’s corner 3-point attempt, which could have tied the score, missed with 3.1 seconds left, the Nets led 124-121, got fouled and finally were able to exhale.
“It felt great. The atmosphere was amazing,” D’Angelo Russell said. “We’re a young group. Finishing games in this league is hard. Guys make shots when they have to. It’s where amazing happens. … Being better at finishing games with our group is going to be the biggest challenge for us.”
In the first game since Lin suffered a ruptured patellar tendon, Russell, DeMarre Carroll and Trevor Booker all had 17 points to lead six Nets in double figures.
“That’s our brother, so you don’t want to forget about him. But going out there guys knew they had to step up and they did,” said Russell, who added six assists and a dazzling jitterbug crossover move on his way to a huge late bucket.
“As players, we didn’t bring [Lin’s injury] up. The coach [Kenny Atkinson] brought it up. Everybody knows it’s a tough loss for us,” said Booker, who added 11 boards off the bench. “We still have to go out and play, and we can dedicate this win to him. It’s a big win for us.”
The Nets’ defense was still as shaky as it was in their seasonopening loss at Indiana. And their issues with stretch fives continued. They were torched by Nikola Vucevic’s career-high 41 points on 17-of-22 shooting, including 6-of-8 from deep.
But Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (15 points) and rookie Jarrett Allen — at 19, the second-youngest Net to ever appear in a game — provided some much-needed mobility to slow him late. Trailing 97-93 in the fourth, the Nets used an 11-3 run to go ahead for good.
With most of the starters off the floor, the bench tipped the scales. Allen’s free throws capped the run, and his dunk off a feed by Spencer Dinwiddie (16 points, five assists, five boards) made it 106-102. They held the Magic off from there.
“It was crazy. The fans were excited, they were loud. I didn’t expect to see that many fans. It was great. We’ve got a lot of support- ers, a lot of loyal fans. We’ve just got to go out there and play hard and try not to let them down,” Carroll said.
“We definitely wanted it and I think it showed on the court,” Booker said. “We were tired, but we wanted it so we pushed through it.”