But they closed it Thursday by jumping ahead by 24, and making just enough plays to hold on for dear life.
“Yeah, just learning from our mistakes. Just learning how to finish games. It just comes with time,” said Cam Thomas, who had 24 points and seven boards off the bench in his second game back from injury.
“It was better earlier in the year because we had training camp playing through everything. But now we’ve got two different players, different guys, different lineups, guys in and out of the lineup. So we’ve still got to find how we can play together in the last few minutes. But I think it’s going to come along good. We’ve just got to keep repping it.”
It came along good Thursday, thanks to Thomas and to Cam Johnson’s team-high 26 points on 6-of-12 from deep.
Cam Johnson drives to the basket during the Nets’ win.
Johnson suffered an ankle injury on the final play of the game when he was battling for a rebound with teammate Ziaire Williams but X-Rays after the game were negative.
D’Angelo Russell (11 points and 12 ᴀssists) and Nic Claxton (16 points and 11 rebounds) each had double-doubles.
“Yeah, the league’s hard to win. Especially a young team winning is not easy,” said Russell, in just his second game of his Nets encore stint. “So for our group, I think the more we can find ways to not beat ourselves at the end of the game, I think we’ll be alright.
D’Angelo Russell is defended by Ryan Rollins during the second half of the Nets’ win over the Bucks.
“Obviously, being a young team, you’ve got to beat yourself. You’re going to mess up. It’s part of being young in the league. So just limit those mistakes, we’ll be alright. We were beating ourselves at the end, and we still found a way to win. So if we limit those plays we’ll be alright.”
The Nets have shown more pluck and won more games than many expected during a season they’re perceived as tanking.
“Jordi and I had heart-to-hearts of hey, look we’re going to build this and this is how we’re going to build it. We want to be a partnership together on this. So he’s been nothing but fantastic,” GM Sean Marks told the Post. “He made it very clear ‘I’m going to go out there and I’m going to try and coach and win every game.’ I said great, go for it. The goal isn’t to not compete, right? The goal is you go out there, develop a culture of competing and playing hard and playing the right way.
“And that’s what he’s done. Obviously when talent leaves, comes and goes from the team, it’s not an easy task. So by no means does this coaching staff right now have an easy run. There’s been multiple days where whether it’s through injuries or trades, that the lineup looks quite different and they’ve had to figure that out. So they’re learning on the fly and doing a heck of a job, very admirable job of dealing with these ups and downs and ins and outs.”
Milwaukee had been 4-1 with Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Damian Lillard together. The former had a game-high 27 points, while Lillard added 23 and seven ᴀssists.
But the Nets won on defense, outscoring the Bucks 27-8 in points off turnovers.
It was 66-54 at the break, but the Nets stormed out of the locker room with a 14-2 run to push it to 24 on Claxton’s free throw.
The Nets did let the Bucks close the quarter on a 17-4 blitz, much of it with Russell resting. It seemed a carbon copy of their Magic loss, and Brooklyn appeared on the verge of giving this away.
Milwaukee got within 111-108 with a minute left.
Brooklyn Nets’ Cam Thomas puts up a sH๏τ as Brook Lopez defends during the Nets’ win over the Bucks.
Then Lillard got free and drove the lane, cutting the lead to 111-110.
But after the Nets forced an Antetokounmpo miss inside, Ziaire Williams — in his first game back after missing 12 straight — snatched the defensive rebound with 6.1 seconds left.
He calmly sank a pair of free throws on the other end, and when Lillard missed a last-ditch 3, the Nets had held on.
