HARDEN HURT IN WIN
Nets overcome loss of another star, big deficit to top Rockets
The Nets lost James Harden. But Kyrie Irving wouldn’t let them lose the game, too — try as they might.
After Harden left the court with a tight right hamstring, Irving helped the Nets pull out a comefrom-behind 120-108 win over Houston before 1,773 at Barclays Center on Wednesday night.
Facing the struggling Rockets team from whom they acquired Harden, the Nets (33-15) managed to win and take over first place in the East from Philadelphia. But they made this far tougher than it should’ve been.
“We talked about it at halftime. They know. They know,” coach Steve Nash said. “They’re professional basketball players. They know that it wasn’t good enough, wasn’t tough enough, mentally weren’t locked in and didn’t give the effort or the respect that was deserved. It doesn’t matter what’s said or who said it. We talked it over, they took the challenge. That’s what matters.
“You can talk until you’re blue in the face, if they don’t take the challenge, it doesn’t matter. They had pride and they had respect for each other and they went out competed and were unbelievable in the second half. It’s not perfect, but it was a heck of an effort, losing James, Kevin [Durant] out, Landry [Shamet] out, LaMarcus [Aldridge] not playing yet. It was I thought an outstanding effort and I’m proud of them and made up for a very painful first quarter or so.”
They dug themselves an 18-point hole, and were still down 101-95 in the fourth quarter, before closing the game on a 25-7 run, including the first dozen unanswered. Irving had a game-high 31 points and 12 assists, taking over late.
Irving found Joe Harris (28 points, 7 of 12 from deep) for a corner 3 to put them ahead, and Blake Griffin followed with a 3 of his own to make it 105-101. A Harris driving layup padded it to 107101, and they pulled away from there.
“[The win] reveals very little honestly, because we’re gonna get every team’s best shot, so that’s something that we’ve come to accept,” Irving said. “We know the game plan that we need to execute and it’s up to us to go out and do it at a very high level. Sometimes we don’t make that choice in the first four minutes or the first five minutes, where we get down 18-6 or 18-4 and we’re just digging ourselves out of holes on the scoreboard.
“Just gotta be resilient, persevere through this and we’ll start making shots. But it just comes with our effort. Gotta bring it from the first five minutes. In the last few games we’ve failed to do so, so we played catch-up and we got away with this one, but against the great teams we know we’ve gotta bring it from minute one.”
The Nets let the Rockets hit eight of their first nine shots, digging themselves into a 24-8 hole right out of the gate. They trailed 42-29 after a first quarter that saw them allow 78.9 percent shooting and 7 of 9 from deep.
It was still 68-57 at the break, despite a combined 35 points from Irving and Harden. They can only hope the latter doesn’t miss much time. He tested his hamstring late in the game but was held out. His status for Thursday’s game against Charlotte is in doubt.
Brooklyn still trailed 82-69 with 5:09 left in the third on a Jae’Sean Tate driving layup. That’s when the Nets mounted their first rally, a 14-0 run with the first dozen either scored or created by Irving.
Kelly Olynyk’s driving floater put the Rockets back up 87-86 to end the period, and the Nets fell back behind 101-95. But Brooklyn closed on that 25-7 run.
The Nets, who couldn’t buy a stop early, harassed the Rockets into missing 11 of 12 down the stretch. Nic Claxton (12 points, eight boards, plus-19) played the entire fourth quarter again and was praised by Nash as their best defender.
“Like you said, we had a real, real, real, real, real, real slow start,” Claxton said. “But, coming back and having that grit to win was big and that comeback was a lot of fun.” Nets weigh in on KD’s latest Twitter spat / P. 45