Michael Porter Jr. made two free throws with 5.7 seconds left in the first quarter and Brooklyn was only four points behind. He’d scored 14 already. In a better game for the Nets, the rest of the offense would have had time to catch up with him.
Dallas beat Brooklyn 130-93 at American Airlines Center. Porter finished with 19, and for most of the night it was the Mavericks who could hand the ball to the next player and get another basket. That matters more than whether Brooklyn’s opening quarter looked respectable in a box score.
That was a sharp change from Saturday in Atlanta, where Brooklyn lost 124-121 after staying in front or level until the closing portion of the game. Against Dallas, the Nets did tie the score early, but they never led. The Mavericks’ advantage was seven after one quarter, 20 at halftime and 29 after three.
Dallas did not need to make the opening feel hopeless. It simply refused to let Brooklyn’s first-quarter competence become control.
Michael Porter Jr. supplied the most persuasive case that Brooklyn had a chance to make this difficult. He scored 14 points in the first quarter, beginning with a running layup and free throw, then hitting two 24-foot 3-pointers and a running jumper. His two free throws with 5.7 seconds remaining cut the Dallas lead to four before the quarter ended at 33-26.
Porter finished with 19 points, nine rebounds and five made field goals on 15 attempts. His 4-for-11 shooting from 3-point range tells part of the story, but not all of it. He had the shot-making to keep Brooklyn within reach early; Dallas had enough different answers to make one scorer’s hot stretch insufficient.
Nolan Traore scored 14, Randle had 13 and Moritz Wagner added 12, yet the Nets finished 31-for-80 from the floor and 11-for-39 from beyond the arc.
There were signs of help for Porter. Randle’s first layup tied the game at 2, and Traore made a floater and a three later in the period. Gafford blocked a Traore drive along the way. Brooklyn gave Dallas enough to deal with in the first quarter. It couldn’t get the same range of contributions for the full game.
Dallas finished 48-for-84, or 57.1%, from the field. The 14-for-35 3-point shooting helped, but the less flashy foundation was 34 made two-point baskets on 49 attempts and 64 points in the paint. Those figures do not mean every interior score came from the same action, or that every missed Brooklyn shot was forced by Dallas.
They do show that the Mavericks had more than one route to a basket when the Nets’ perimeter scoring failed to match the pace.
