The Brooklyn Nets left Houston last night with a victory they had no business obtaining. The Nets trailed by 13 points with 4:01 remaining in regulation, and then by 8 with 1:09 remaining. From the 1:09 point until the clock hit triple zero in the fourth quarter, Brooklyn outscored Houston 12-4 to force overtime on the back of Spencer Dinwiddie’s heroics.
James Harden continued his absurd stretch of play by dropping 58 points against the Nets. This elicited some MVP chants from the crowd. Problem is, they were chanting MVP for the wrong guy as Dinwiddie saved Brooklyn’s backside with his 33 point outburst (it’s a joke, relax).
The Nets in total scored 46 points in the fourth quarter to force the extra period. Brooklyn went on to win the game by 3. What happened last night was incredible, so let’s run through the ending of the game.
End of 4th Quarter
With 1:09 remaining, P.J. Tucker hit a three-pointer to push the Rockets’ lead to 127-119. At that point, ESPN’s win probability graph gave Houston a 97.2% chance of winning the game. After a few possessions that resulted in 1 point for the Rockets and Brooklyn going a collective 3/4 from the line, the Nets trailed by 6 with 28.2 seconds remaining. Then the Dinwiddie heroics began.
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On the Rockets ensuing possession, Harden drew a foul but missed the second free throw attempt. Coming down the other way Dinwiddie hit a pull up three over Austin Rivers with 21 seconds left to cut the lead to 1. Brooklyn then fouled Tucker with 15 seconds remaining, who miraculously missed both free throws.
The Nets, however, completely blew it as Harden muscled his way through DeMarre Carroll and around Jarrett Allen to snag the offensive rebound. Harden then hit both free throws to push the lead to 3 with 12 seconds left.
With no timeouts, Brooklyn inbounded the ball to Dinwiddie who raced up the court and did this.
Insane.
Harden missed a three-pointer at the end of regulation and the game went to overtime.
Overtime
In overtime Dinwiddie collected seven points along with two assists. Dinwiddie is the one that dimed up Jarrett Allen on this beautiful cut to the basket.
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This isn’t the best camera angle, but Allen does an excellent job of faking a wide pin down for three point assassin Joe Harris, and then darting to the rim for an easy layup and a foul.
Dinwiddie got his own and-1 with the game’s biggest bucket. After Allen cut the Houston lead to two with the above roll to the rim, he missed the ensuing free throw. Treveon Graham grabbed the offensive rebound, and with 28 seconds left Dinwiddie hit a floater through contact.
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Dinwiddie hit the free throw to put the Nets up 1.
On the ensuing Rockets possession, the functional last possession of the game, Kenny Atkinson had a rather simple defensive philosophy; force not James Harden to take the last shot. Atkinson was rather aggressive about sending a double at Harden a few feet behind the three-point line. This resulted in a wide open three-point attempt from Austin Rivers, but that is the shot you are conceding you will live with to make sure Harden isn’t the one that beats you.
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Rivers missed, the Nets got the rebound, and Joe Harris hit two free throws to push the Brooklyn lead to 3. With 1.6 seconds left, Gerald Green missed a corner three off an inbound pass in the front court.
Absolutely miraculous.
Subplots
In Brooklyn’s last two games they have beaten Boston and now Houston. On Friday December 7th, the Nets were in the midsts of an eight game losing streak, sitting at 8-18, with a home date against the Raptors that night. They won that game with Toronto in overtime, launching a seven game win streak.
In total since December 7th, Brooklyn is 15-5 and have clawed their way to .500 as they’re now 23-23 on the season after last night’s victory in Houston.
For the year the Nets are 19th in point differential, at -0.6, but are 13th at 1.3 since December 7th. FiveThirtyEight now gives Brooklyn a 71% chance of making the playoffs, which is astounding to think about 46 games into the season given pre-season expectations.
The other subplot nugget to touch upon is that Jarrett Allen collected a 20-20 game last night! Allen finished with 20 points and 24 rebounds in the win, along with that beautiful rim roll with 40 seconds left to play in overtime.
For the first time in a long time, basketball is exciting in Brooklyn.
