The Brooklyn Nets have struggled to perform in the fourth quarter of plenty of games that they have either lost the lead in the end or where a small deficit became a blowout in the blink of an eye. As Brooklyn finishes this season as strong as possible, it looks like they figured out a way to overcome their fourth-quarter demons.
The Nets beat the Toronto Raptors on Monday 96-88 and while the game was not pretty from a scoring standpoint. Brooklyn stayed within striking distance for the majority of the contest. Granted, the Raptors were missing plenty of their better players for a variety of reasons, but the Nets were in the same boat as well.
After going into halftime down 69-68, the Nets managed to have their best scoring quarter of the game along with holding Toronto to their lowest-scoring quarter of the game as they built their lead to 13 points within the period. In contrast to Brooklyn’s fourth-quarter meltdown in Saturday’s 105-93 loss at the New York Knicks, the Nets took care of business against an undermanned Raptors team.
One of the reasons for that was the play of Trendon Watford, who scored 19 points and grabbed seven rebounds in one of his best games as a Net this season. After the game, he gave his reaction to how the team got its act together in the fourth quarter:
“It was big. Like I said, KO (Nets interim head coach Kevin Ollie) called some good sets and got the guy involved in the action that we wanted to get and I think we made some good plays out of that. That’s when we were able to take off late in the fourth.”
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