Michael Porter Jr. leads Nets to win over Pelicans
The Nets have won the third straight game that Michael Porter Jr. has started.
There may be an inflection point coming sooner rather than later.
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Granted, this last one came 119-101 against the pitiful Pelicans before 17,055 at Barclays Center.
New Orleans is so terrible they’re not even tanking and still out-tanked the Nets, who improved to 6-17 and look respectable with Porter in the lineup.
The Nets strategically rested Porter in Thursday’s matchup of lottery hopefuls — injury management for his lower back — and Brooklyn collapsed offensively in the fourth quarter.
It was a calculated result that moved them up into fourth in the lottery odds.
But it also showed Porter’s impact.
Saturday underscored it, as he outscored the Pelicans.
Porter poured in a game-high 35 points on 14-of-23 shooting, including 5-of-10 from 3-point range.
It tied a career-long string of three straight 30-point outings.
It’s no coincidence that the Nets won all of those games, and they are now 6-7 in his last 13 appearances since Cam Thomas went down.
Porter came into the night in the 79th percentile in on-off impact, per Cleaning The Glass.
Offensively the boost was even greater, in the 91st percentile.
And his budding chemistry with Nic Claxton has helped the center blossom into a legitimate offensive hub, cutting up opposing defenses with dribble handoffs.
Claxton had his second career triple-double with a game-high 10 assists to go with 14 points, 10 rebounds, three blocks and a plus-24 to dominate Pelicans rookie Derik Queen, for whom they gave away next year’s likely lottery pick.
The Nets led by 28 in shooting .528 overall and 14-of-35 from deep.
Meanwhile, Nets rookie Egor Dëmin (eight points, seven assists, four boards) outplayed Jeremiah Fears, who was taken one spot ahead of him at seventh in the draft but finished 4-of-16 and a minus-22.
Trey Murphy had 23 points for the Pelicans, who fell to 3-21.
With the Nets leading just 14-13 early, they used a 16-4 run over 3 ½ minutes to open up a 30-17 cushion on a nice feed from rookie Danny Wolf to Day’Ron Sharpe.
They never let it get close the rest of the evening.
After Fears pulled the Pelicans within 51-42, another 13-2 run ended any drama.
Terance Mann capped the run and made it 64-44.
The lead ballooned to 28 when Porter found Ziaire Williams for a layup and 92-64 lead with three minutes left in the third.
The fourth was garbage time.
Claxton is the first Net with multiple triple-doubles in a season since James Harden (nine) and Kevin Durant (four) back in 2021-22, which likely seems like a lifetime ago to Brooklyn fans.
He’s just the second center in team history with multiple career triple-doubles, after Shawn Bradley’s five from 1995-97.
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