With their season on the line, the Brooklyn Nets defeated the Chicago Bulls in emphatic fashion, 110-91 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, tightening the series to 3-2 and giving them an opportunity to push it to a seven-game series with a win in Chicago Thursday.
The win followed a heartbreaking 142-134 triple-overtime Brooklyn loss in Chicago, and a notable moment at halftime when Chicago Sun-Times columnist Joe Cowley went on YES Network and said that Bulls players had privately called the Nets “gutless” and “heartless”:
Brooklyn Nets guard Deron Williams finished the night with 23 points and 10 assists, and noted that the team didn’t watch any film from Game 4 as a team (though they did watch brief clips in small groups of guards & bigs), just the video of Cowley above.
“I don’t know who that is,” Williams smiled. “We laughed about it. (Nets interim head coach) P.J. (Carlesimo) wanted us to watch it, and we were sitting there after it’s over, like ‘that’s it?’ What are we supposed to do now, like “ARRRGH, we’re mad!?,” which drew loud laughs from the media.
“That doesn’t mean anything. We wanted to win this game for us and for our fans and for a chance to extend our season. We didn’t want to go fishing. We didn’t want to be on TNT with the hats on, Chuck talking about us, Kenny talking about us.”
Williams added he might watch it again before Game 6. “Maybe that’s gonna be our theme now.”