Ding dong the streak is dead. The Nets snapped an 11 game losing streak on Monday night in a 109-85 win over the Sacramento Kings at the Barclays Center.
The win was the Nets first at home in nearly a month and marked their first victory since Jan. 21 in San Antonio. And it came in a game where Brooklyn received some much-needed reinforcements in the return of LaMarcus Aldridge as well as the Nets debuts of Seth Curry and Andre Drummond.
All three played a major role in the win, along with a banner night for Bruce Brown.
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“(It’s) been great since the moment (I) stepped here,” Curry said. “Everybody (has) made it easy. …I said (earlier) even though they’ve been on a 10, 11 game losing streak, the energy’s been great. Since day one, everybody (has) a lot of optimism. New additions, the brand of basketball that we plan on playing is a lot of fun. That showed on the court.”
Curry finished the game with a team-high 23 points on 10-of-18 shooting from the field and 3-of-8 from beyond the arc. Aldridge and Brown each put up 19 points, and Cam Thomas had 14 off the bench.
Drummond had 11 points on the night, along with 9 rebounds and was a strong presence down low.
“I thought we continued to play with the fight, spirit, connectivity that we’ve asked them to play with. We just got a better result tonight,” Nets coach Steve Nash said. “I was proud of them. Other than that little stretch to start the third I think we had our best defensive performance of the year. Challenged them to stay locked in and contest everything and be physical and they did that.”
The effort from Brown was also a season-best in three different areas. His 19 points were a new season, as was his 6 assists and 5 steals against Sacramento.
“I was just getting the ball off the rim and pushing the ball,” Brown said when asked what made him so successful on Monday. “I have shooters around me. Patty (Mills), Seth now. When other guys come back. There’s just space on the floor so I can just find angles, get to the rim or just find them for catch and shoot threes.”
"Feels good… hello Brooklyn!"
? @AndreDrummond pic.twitter.com/6GK3qpmZf8
— Brooklyn Nets (@BrooklynNets) February 15, 2022
The Nets controlled the game from start to finish on Monday night and led by as much as 19 on three different occasions during the course of the win. Brooklyn opened the game with a 13-2 run that included two Curry pull-up jumpers to kick off his Nets career.
Brooklyn allowed the Kings to crawl back into the game late in the second quarter after they cut the deficit to single digits. De’Aaron Fox cut the Nets’ lead to just three when he hit a stepback three with 1:12 left in the first half.
Fox cut the lead to three again when he knocked down a pair of free throws moments later, but the Nets went into halftime up by seven after Aldridge finished on a putback layup.
Followed that up with one of their best defensive periods of basketball of the season when they held the Kings to just 18 points and kept them to 66 through three-quarters of play. It was the third-fewest points that the Nets had surrendered in that time span this season.
