The Nets finally won a gameꩵ, but lost a couple of starters.
Brooklyn saw Cam Johnson and Noah Cl🅠owney both forced off the floor with injuries in the final minutes of a pyrrhic 115-112 victory over Washington before 16,316 at Capital One Arena on Saturday night.
Tyrese Martin and Jalen Wilson shared team-high scoring honors with 20 points apiece, with Martin engineering th🎀e go-ahead score with eight seconds left. Martin ran a two-man game with Drew Timme, with the former Gonzaga big man getting to the rim to draw a goaltend that proved the eventual game-winner.
“That’s what we drew up,” Timme said in a postgame TV interview. “💮They go⛄altended, but I think it was going in anyway.”
The Nets rallied from a 17-point deficit, and still 🔯had to pull the game out in the waning seconds.
“Coach told us basically to nut up, in a PG way,” said Timme, who had 19 points and six rebounds in his second NBA game. “He was like, ‘Y’all got to [fight].’ They’ve got 23 free throws, we have three or four. You can say it’s the refs a🌜ll you want, but at the end of the day you’ve got to attack. You gotta make them make calls. Offensively and defensively we had to be more aggressive, and that’s what we tried to do.”
After seeing the lowly Wizards hold a🐷 23-7 first-half advantage ✤in free throws taken, the Nets earned a 13-10 edge after the break.
Martin’s layup put the Nets up 108-99 with 2:32 to play befor🐎e they got sloppy, turning the ball over three times to allow a 13-3 Wizards run.
Washington’s AJ Johnson had 14 of his team-high 20 points in the fourth quarter. And his 32-fo🃏oter put the Nets down 112-111 with 23 seconds to play.
But after a timeout, Timme got underneath AJ Johnson and drew the goalte💟nd from JT Thor.
Good defense by Trendon Watford forced Colby Jones baseline, and into a tꦫurnover with 𒉰2.7 seconds left, and Wilson iced it at the line.
“Alwa༒ys confident,” Wilson said. “Always confident. We shoot a lot of free throws duri𓆏ng practice, after practice. So, you know, I was excited for that moment just to get to seal the game like that.”
The Nets (24-51) snapped a six-game losing skid, a wiꦕn that could prove costly.
It dropped them to sixth in the lottery odds, half a💛 game behind fifth-place Philadelphia after the 76ers’ seventh straight loss.
The Nets also had Cam Johnson come off with four min🐟utes left following a hard fall on his back.
Then ⛎a minute later Clowney — starting in lieu of absent Nic Claxton — twisted the same right ankle that had sidelin🍸ed him earlier this season.
Coach🌼 Jordi Fernández said both will be evaluated, but it was too soon to know abou♌t the severity of either.
The Wizards fell to 16-58.
Day’Ron Sharpe (knee) missed a third straight game, while Claxton and D’Angelo Russell were reste🥃d𒈔 on the tail end of a back-to-back.
Khris Middleton, Kyshawn George, Malcolm Brogdon, Corey Kispert and Bilal Coulibaly were🌠 out for the Wizards. 𒐪
