Last night I brought my young cousins to watch the worst team in basketball. What a relief to watch them improve to the second-worst, and in such electrifying fashion, too:
Randy Foye shot just twice all game, and sunk the one that mattered. The Nets, who shoot from deep more often than anyone save the Rockets, continue to live and (mostly) die by the three ball.
Considering that one team sits fourth in the conference and the other team started Joe Harris, the game stayed remarkably tight through all four quarters. Fans moaned when Jeremy Lin—who’d posted what was then a game-high 17 points—tweaked the same left hamstring that sidelined him for 17 games this season. But after he left the floor, the Nets found a spurt of efficient offense from crafty shooting guards Bojan Bogdanovic (26 points) and Sean Kilpatrick (23 points), and Brook Lopez awoke from a first-half slumber to score 21. All three shot over 60 percent from the field; it seems several Nets need to play at the far fringe of their capacity for the team to beat anyone.
The Nets had built up a nice six-point cushion with three minutes to go, but then Nicolas Batum converted a four-point play and Cody Zeller began cutting smoothly through the non-existent post defense and scoring at will (lol). With 2.3 seconds left on the clock and the Hornets up 118-117, I’d given up hope and shifted attention to the tricky zipper on my hoodie. But now I can die having seen a buzzer beater in person. Below are some more angles if you’re still curious; I’m happy with my view from the nosebleeds, a row behind the hysterical child, a few yards from the staircase with a slippery cold cut draped over it.