NEW YORK — The Brooklyn Nets welcomed the Portland Trail Blazers to Barclays Center on Sunday for some basketball on football day and lost 134-127.
For the Nets, Mikal Bridges had 42 points and four rebounds while Cam Johnson had 17 points and six rebounds. Nic Claxton had 16 points and Day’Ron Sharpe had 11 points off the bench.
For the Trail Blazers, Anfernee Simons had 38 points and 11 assists while Jerami Grant had 27 points and two rebounds. Shaedon Sharpe had 21 points off the bench and Malcolm Brogdon had 18 points off the pine.
In the first half, the Nets appeared to be going through the motions as they had trouble taking care of the ball and weren’t able to be efficient shooting the ball from behind the three-point line. That was more evident towards the end of the half as it looked like the Trail Blazers were playing harder than Brooklyn was.
In the second half, Portland continued to hang around thanks to the sizzling play of Simons and Grant as Brooklyn could not find an answer to limiting either player. Bridges came up clutch for the Nets in the fourth quarter, but Brooklyn had some miscues that forced the game into overtime.
In overtime, Simons continued to lead the charge for the Trail Blazers and even after Bridges did his best to continue his scoring binge along with Brooklyn trying to blitz Simons, nothing seemed to work. Claxton also had five fouls down the stretch so he could not present much of a challenge at the rim without the fear of fouling.
Here are your Nets player grades following Sunday’s loss: