Mikel Brown Jr. gave Brooklyn a late spark, but it wasn’t enough to save the Nets from a collapse that erased a 17-point cushion and left them with a 124-121 loss to the Hawks at State Farm Arena.
Brown’s 3-pointer with 2:13 left put the Nets ahead 114-110, and it was the third triple in a furious closing stretch for the rookie, who had missed his first seven shots. He finished with 18 points, 13 of them in the fourth quarter, and his surge helped Brooklyn look like it might survive a game it had controlled for long stretches.
Instead, the final two minutes turned into a full breakdown. Atlanta ripped off 10 straight points to steal the game, and the Nets were left with a defeat that overshadowed Day’Ron Sharpe’s triple-double, Nolan Traoré’s efficient night and Brown’s comeback.
Brooklyn had led all night and opened the game with real rhythm. The Nets shot 14 of 19 in the first quarter, piled up 37 points and got 3-pointers from six different players while building a lead as large as 17.
Traoré set the tone early, scoring seven of Brooklyn’s first nine points. He finished with 19 points on 8-for-10 shooting, added two 3-pointers, four steals and just one turnover in a little under 23 minutes.
Danny Wolf, starting for the first time this season after his productive outing against Charlotte, gave Brooklyn a strong frontcourt presence right away. He collected seven defensive rebounds in his first nine minutes and ended with 11 points and nine boards.
But the biggest question from the night came after the fourth quarter began: why didn’t Traoré play again?
“Mikel had those five straight points, and I just let him roll,” Jordi Fernández said afterward. “Because you cannot just keep taking them in and out.
I think that when I was about to sub Nolan in, Mikel made two or three 3s and a mid-range pull-up. So, I thought that was the right thing to do.
Was it right? I don’t know.
Obviously, Nolan did very well. They scored 18 and 19.
So that’s a very good contribution from your two point guards.”
Fernández stayed with Brown for all 12 minutes of the fourth, and the move made sense in the moment. Brown caught fire after his rough start, going 5-for-9 from the field in the period and drilling three 3-pointers. He also set up Julius Randle for a tomahawk dunk on a pocket pass that forced Quin Snyder to call timeout midway through the quarter.
Still, Traoré never returned, and Atlanta kept chipping away. The Hawks outscored Brooklyn 36-26 in the fourth, and the Nets’ offense, while productive, couldn’t finish the job.
Sharpe’s night was the kind that should have been remembered for all the right reasons. He posted 12 points, 10 rebounds and 13 assists, the most ever by a Nets center. Three nights after setting a career high with eight assists against Charlotte, he kept finding cutters and working dribble handoffs while Porter operated as a featured scorer.
Porter led Brooklyn with 25 points and nine rebounds. Randle added 19 points, eight assists and seven rebounds, though he also turned it over six times. As a team, the Nets had 29 assists, a sign that the ball movement that had been missing early in the season was starting to show up.
The problem was everything else. Brooklyn had 22 turnovers, and Atlanta turned those into 28 points.
The Hawks also dominated the paint, scoring 70 points there, and piled up 20 fast-break points to the Nets’ four. Atlanta took 16 more shots, with Jalen Johnson scoring 30 and Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Aaron Wiggins adding 20 apiece.
The Hawks did it on the second night of a back-to-back after beating Washington on Friday.
The ending also echoed Monday’s loss to the Knicks, when Brooklyn took a four-point lead into the fourth quarter and managed only 11 points in a 103-90 defeat. This time, the Nets had more scoring, more playmaking and several standout individual performances. They still couldn’t close.
Brooklyn fell to 2-7 and heads to Dallas on Sunday for the second stop on a four-game road trip. The trip continues Wednesday in New Orleans and next Saturday in Memphis. Egor Dëmin, who is recovering from a bone bruise, has already been ruled out against the Mavericks.
For stretches, Fernández’s reshuffled lineup looked like it was starting to click. When the game tightened, the Nets kept scoring. They just didn’t make enough of the plays that decide wins.
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