Mikal Bridges surprised Jacque Vaughn with his 30-point game and scoring bursts, taking on the responsibilities of being the Nets’ No. 1 scoring option. In the first quarter of the Nets’ game against the Hornets on Sunday, Bridges made his first eight attempts, finishing the frame with 19 points and contributing to Brooklyn’s 70-point outburst in the first half.
He finished the game with 33 points and paced a balanced offensive performance, blending with a Brooklyn defence that held the Hornets to 41 points in the first half. The Nets secured their first set of back-to-back wins since the Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant trades, with a chance to achieve their first three-game winning streak since December against last-place Houston on Tuesday.
Following a difficult stretch of games against the Bucks, Knicks, and Celtics, the Nets are now in a two-game span where it should be easier for them to emerge with wins and maintain their grip on a playoff position.
The defence had been a work in progress for the Nets since the trade deadline, but they seem to have found a potential blueprint for the future with Friday’s win in Boston when they overcame a 28-point deficit against the Celtics. In the first half against the Hornets, the Nets only committed one turnover and forced seven from their opponents.
They disrupted possession after possession, and Charlotte only hit 3 of 13 3-pointers and 34.9 per cent of its shots overall during the opening 24 minutes.
Dinwiddie finished the game with 24 points, hitting three 3-pointers, and Joe Harris added three makes from beyond the arc, too. The Nets connected at a 52 per cent clip from the field during that span. Bridges helped the Nets avoid falling into a trap, but the Nets didn’t necessarily need to score at that clip like in other games to win.
Although they had one of their worst scoring droughts at the start of the third quarter when they failed to score on their first five possessions, the Hornets couldn’t connect on shots during that stretch either, failing to trim the lead. Bridges missed his first shots of the game during this time, but the Nets were still able to maintain their lead.
The Hornets eventually trimmed the lead to 15 early in the fourth quarter, but the game was over. After nearly a month of tinkering, retooling, and trying to patch together his lineup, Vaughn’s buoyant lineup for the remainder of the season — with Bridges as an emerging centrepiece — has finally started to emerge.
»Mikal Bridges surprises Jacque Vaughn with his 30-point game«
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