Kevin Durant leads Brooklyn to 109-102 victory over Orlando, get back to .500
The Nets are full of mystery, just not on a nightly basis. What goes on behind the scenes of the organizational decisions that have defined the franchise’s recent direction, who knows? Ditto on what tomorrow’s drama will be – you know it’s coming. But if you couldn’t tell where this game was headed after three minutes, you must be new around here.
Jacque Vaughn called Brooklyn’s first time-out after those three minutes, after seeing, presumably, the exact start he wished to avoid. The score was 12-5, Orlando; that score perfectly reflects the feel of the game. Brooklyn came out sloppy, and while the offense has actually been league-average with Ben Simmons and Nic Claxton sharing the floor, it wasn’t early on Monday night. A cramped paint led to turnovers, and the young magic worked up a sweat and a lead. The tenor of the game was decided.
“I think we’re going to create a little blooper reel…we definitely had some that are for the ages,” Vaughn quipped about Brooklyn’s 16 turnovers throughout the night, adding that the Nets were “just handing them the basketball, at times.”
It might be fatalistic to assign so much weight to the first three minutes of a game, but again, we’ve seen this movie before. We know how this goes. Brooklyn quickly battled back with some nice runs, often triggered by the “defense to offense” paradigm every coach touts, and incredible shot-making by Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. They combined for an aesthetically pleasing 30 points on 13-19 in the first half. Joe Harris added nine of his own, including a welcome 3-pointer (despite missing a host — specifically six — of others) and perhaps his best drive of the young season so far:
So, of course, there were positives. Even as Brooklyn found itself in a see-saw affair with a team a title contender would expect to blow out. Even with Ben Simmons as an early-scratch with left knee soreness (more on that, soon). But it was hard to walk away from the first-half starry-eyed. We were going to get another close one with a scrappy, youthful team full of confidence. Same old story, and why wouldn’t the Magic be feeling good? They were doing battle with Kevin Durant, for God’s sake.
Then, suddenly, they weren’t; they were looking up at greatness. Franz Wagner and Paolo Banchero, with a dash of Bol Bol, were hitting tough pull-ups and fade-aways. They were excellent. KD just kept going. Durant had 19 points in the third quarter, but was even more dominant than that suggests. He blocked a pull-up from Bol Bol, he repeatedly locked up in isolation situations, and he added an emphatic weak-side block. The Magic started to double him, because of course, and it led to advantages Brooklyn capitalized on:
With Ben Simmons out, Nets have been comfortable going 5-out w/ Clax on the bench. Not even a Markieff Morris sighting. Royce has been the short-roll guy, with decent results. Nice offense here: pic.twitter.com/QtiPbY1rhw
— Lucas Kaplan (@LucasKaplan_) November 29, 2022
Enough can’t be said about Kevin Durant, one of the NBA’s all-time MVPs (Most Valuable Personalities). And no, I don’t mean “personality” because he tweets often, or like to talk junk. That helps, but there’s a butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling you get watching KD hoop vs. one of the worst teams in the league on a Monday night in November. Durant noticed, and undoubtedly respected, the play of Wagner and Banchero. Then he took the challenge and crushed it, because it’s just damn fun to do. It almost sounds tired, corny at this point, but Durant’s combination of talent and enthusiasm for the game can never grow tired. No matter how you look back on this era, whenever and however it ends, one thing is undeniable: We were all blessed KD graced Brooklyn with his presence.
After that third quarter, it was decided. child of The game was still fairly in the balance, with Brooklyn’s lead sloshing around in that eight-point range. Brooklyn’s defense, despite some miscues, did just enough to hold on. Kyrie Irving followed KD’s lead in adding some much-needed, highly-difficult buckets. And while Joe Harris continued to miss most of his three-point shots, his offensive aggression paid off big-time. Someone needed to shoot the ball, and ending up with 17 points on 11 attempts from the field isn’t too bad.
But this was Kevin Durant’s night. Losing after a performance like that would have constituted a level of basketball sin even the Nets wouldn’t dare commit. KD respects the basketball gods far too much. Sure, it’s cause for concern that Brooklyn needed Durant to go nuclear to beat this Magic team… that he played 39 minutes on a back-to-back. But after witnessing an individual performance like that, it’s hard to go to sleep anything but giddy that Kevin Durant is still a Net. 45/7/5, making 19 of his 24 shots, most of which were contested jumpers. Man. And he delivered the quote of the night to YES Network’s Justin Shackil.
Now go watch the freaking highlights:
Ben Simmons exits game with knee soreness
As previously mentioned, Ben Simmons left the game in the second quarter with, officially, “left knee soreness”. It’s the same knee that’s been ailing him for a few weeks now. There wasn’t much additional information to glean from Jacque Vaughn’s post-game presser.
“Yeah, so he had some left knee soreness, that same knee, asked to be pulled out of the game,” Vaughn said. “We’ll check in kind of day by day see he respondes to a little treatment, see what it looks like tomorrow.”
When asked if the knee soreness could be related to the back injury, Vaughn downplayed that possibility: “No, I think more so than anything, the accumulation of games. Just, he hasn’t had this amount of accumulation of games over a period in a long time.”
up next
Up next, the Brooklyn Nets are home to the Washington Wizards on Wednesday at 7:30 pm ET.
For another perspective on tonight’s game, go to Orlando Pinstriped Post.
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