On Good Friday, the Nets rolled behind great shooting.
No, make that historic shooting.
Brooklyn blew past Chicago 125-108 before a sellout crowd of 17,894 at Barclays Center, and did it with a record barrage from behind the arc.
The Nets hit 18 of 24 from 3-point range in the second half, tying an NBA record for 3s in any half and shattering their own franchise mark of 16 set this season on Nov. 26, 2023 — against these same Bulls.
Something about Chicago brings out the best in the Nets’ shooters. And this was definitely the best, going 25 of 44 from deep in the game.
“It was like everybody got hot at the same time. So it’s just good to get our guys in the flow like that. It’s just beautiful to see, and that’s what flow is. It’s just like an out-of-body experience,” interim coach Kevin Ollie said. “That second half, from a 3-point standpoint, to make those type of 3s and to make them that way, was just beautiful to see and it just looked like we weren’t gonna miss.
“I don’t know if 25 3s is sustainable, but I’m gonna pray. I’m going to go to church before the game on Sunday and I’ll pray about that. I don’t know if that’s sustainable; but the process is sustainable. … I don’t know about 25 3s, I’m not going to count on that every night but I do want to count on our process and trusting it.”
Cam Thomas shook off a slow start and some pesky long-armed defense by Ayo Dosunmu to finish with a team-high 28 points.
Dennis Schroder regularly got past Chicago’s Coby White into the lane, with 27 points, seven assists and five rebounds.
Mikal Bridges scored 25, with both of them hitting 7 of 11 from behind the arc.
“That was actually crazy. The first half you wouldn’t have expected that. It just shows, just keep playing the full game, shots are gonna fall eventually,” Thomas said. “So that’s just a credit to everybody for sticking with it.
“Definitely. When you’re getting stops like that and everybody’s getting it rolling from behind the arc, I mean, it’s contagious. And then everybody just feeds off that.”
The win helped the Nets (29-45) push back elimination for awhile.
After victories at gutted Toronto and talent-poor Washington, they ran their winning streak to three straight by beating a (nearly) solid opponent.
Chicago (35-39) is sitting in ninth in the East.
The Nets’ kept their tragic number at four.
The Hawks were idle Friday night.
Brooklyn trails Atlanta by 5 ½ games for the final play-in spot in the Eastern Conference with just eight dates left on their schedule.
DeMar DeRozan led the Bulls with a game-high 31.
Trailing 59-52 after Nikola Vucevic’s layup 1:52 into the second half, Brooklyn went on a barrage.
The Nets mounted a 17-4 blitz over the next 2:46. After Schroder found Thomas for a tie-breaking 3-pointer, Dorian Finney-Smith stole a bad pass by Alex Caruso.
Then Schroder followed with a long ball of his own, one that gave the Nets a 69-63 lead with 7:02 left in the third quarter and sent the Bulls running for a timeout.
After being just 7 of 20 from 3-point range in the first half, the Nets hit 6 of 7 from deep in the first five minutes of the third quarter.
It spotted them a lead they never surrendered.
“We got stops coming out that third quarter. I think all those shots came from confidence. We were getting stops,” Bridges said. “We were just playing good defense. I think that’s what it was. Yeah, and then we make the shots.”
The Nets saw the cushion shrivel to just 86-85 by the end of the period.
But they never showed the same kind of nerves that so frequently plagued them this season, calmly and inexorably padding the lead back to double figures.
Schroder found Bridges for a 3-pointer to make it 112-102 with 4:30 remaining.
And it eventually reached 14 when Bridges hit a 3 off an inbound, making it 122-108 with just 1:05 left. The final margin was the biggest of the night.
