For a while Saturday night looked like it was headed for the kind of loss that gets ugly in a hurry. Instead, the Brooklyn Nets dragged the Cleveland Cavaliers into a fight, turned the fourth quarter into a shootout, and still came up just short in a 125-121 defeat.
The comeback had a clear engine: Egor Dëmin. He poured in 15 points in the final period, and his work alongside Mikel Brown Jr. gave Brooklyn a real punch late.
The two combined for five fourth-quarter threes, helping the Nets erase a 22-point hole and get within four with 26.4 seconds left. It was enough to make the finish feel alive, even if it never quite crossed the line.
Brooklyn had spent most of the night chasing. Cleveland controlled the first three quarters and took a 96-80 lead into the fourth, with the game looking more like a blowout than anything else. But the Nets kept swinging, and that was the part Jordi Fernandez kept coming back to afterward.
”I think it was the shot quality. We went from taking 35 good shots in the first half to almost 50 in the second… when you take the high-quality shots is when, you know, they don’t all go in at the same time, but then if you keep shooting them, we had that stretch that they kept going in,” Jordi Fernandez said after the game.
That better shot-making didn’t come out of nowhere. Brooklyn had enough early offense to stay within reach in the opening quarter, even if the efficiency wasn’t there.
Julius Randle kept rolling after his strong debut on Wednesday, scoring six points on two-of-three shooting in his first five minutes. Michael Porter Jr. also stayed aggressive, finishing with 28 points on 10-of-18 shooting after building through the game from start to finish.
Still, the Nets had to deal with Cleveland’s pace and shot-making almost immediately. Brooklyn shot 10-of-27 from the field in the first quarter, while the Cavaliers went 11-of-21 and took a 35-30 lead after one. The Nets did create extra possessions, grabbing six offensive rebounds in the period, but those second chances didn’t turn into much early.
Cleveland’s front line set the tone in the first quarter, with Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley each scoring eight points. On Brooklyn’s side, Noah Clowney gave the bench a lift by burying a three on his first shot and then blocking Mobley at the rim.
The second quarter was where the gap widened. Brooklyn was outscored 33-22 and went into halftime down 68-52.
Cleveland shot 57.9% from three in the first half, hitting 11 of 19, while the Nets managed just 40% from the field and 36.4% from deep. Brooklyn actually had nine offensive rebounds to Cleveland’s five by halftime, but the extra work didn’t matter much when the Cavaliers were stringing together those kind of numbers from outside.
And the third quarter didn’t offer much relief. Cleveland’s lead stretched to as many as 19 points before the Nets settled for a 96-80 deficit entering the final period.
Fernandez gave Josh Minott his first minutes of the season with a little over five minutes left in the third, apparently looking for some length and energy to shift the game defensively. Ben Saraf, Drake Powell and Danny Wolf, meanwhile, stayed on the bench for the second straight game, leaving Dëmin and Nolan Traoré as the only members of the Flatbush 5 to appear.
Then came the burst. The Nets finally found a rhythm, the threes started falling, and the game tilted. The fight showed up in the details too, from the bench spark to the way the first group kept pressing when the margin looked out of reach.
Even Dëmin had plenty to say about Brown Jr.’s role in it.
”I think he’s a special player. I think he’s going to be very special for this team, for the organization, for Brooklyn in general… he’s fully embracing the name not just on his back, but on the front of his jersey, and I think that’s what’s most important right now,” Dëmin said about Brown Jr.
Brooklyn never completed the comeback, and Day’Ron Sharpe’s night ended with a sixth foul - a flagrant foul - with 6:54 left in the fourth. But the final stretch still offered a glimpse of what the young group can look like when it starts clicking.
”A lot of times you’re down 20 whatever and then you just stop fighting and it was the whole group. The guys off the bench gave a spark and then the first group… they kept swinging and swinging and swinging,” Fernandez said.
Randle’s line also put him in a small bit of team history. According to NetsPR, his 21 points, six rebounds and five assists made him just the second Net, along with James Harden from 10/19-22, 2021, to open a season with consecutive games of at least 20 points, five rebounds and five assists.
The Nets don’t have much time to sit on the loss. They’re right back at Barclays Center on Sunday night against the Indiana Pacers, the first of a league-high 16 back-to-backs this season. Indiana is 1-1 after beating the New Orleans Pelicans in its opener and then losing 121-105 to the Dallas Mavericks on Friday night.
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For Brooklyn, the matchup brings a few familiar stress points into focus at once. Containing Donovan Mitchell is never simple, and the Nets are also trying to sort through how their young pieces fit in at the start of the year. Egor Demin did not make a three-pointer in the opener, while rookie Mikel Brown Jr. showed flashes in his debut, leaving the Nets with both reasons for patience and reasons to demand a cleaner showing soon. [Read more 🡒]