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Season nears end: Brooklyn Nets lose to Minnesota Timberwolves, 117-91

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Brooklyn Nets v Minnesota Timberwolves
Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Following Brooklyn’s 55th loss of the season, just 48 more minutes of this season remain. Feels about right.

The Brooklyn Nets played their penultimate game of the season on Friday night, their final road outing. It came against a Minnesota Timberwolves team that, despite having played the night before, needed the game for playoff-seeding purposes. Brooklyn had also played the night before, though it was a completely non-competitive loss, and even more regulars would be out on Friday night than Thursday.

No Ziaire Williams, D’Angelo Russell, Nic Claxton, Day’Ron Sharpe, nor Cam Johnson, in addition to the guys already (officially) ruled out for the season.

Though the Philadelphia 76ers finished losing their game to the Atlanta Hawks — locking the Brooklyn Nets into the sixth-best NBA Draft Lottery odds — during the first quarter of Brooklyn’s game, the team has moved past such motivations. There is no reason not to play the young guys, evidenced by a starting lineup in which Trendon Watford was the true vet … at four years.

It took the Wolves a bit to truly wake up, but once they did, predictability ensued. A 7-0 Nets lead was quickly erased, then banished deep into the recesses of the mind. It was 28-16 Wolves after the first quarter, and though the teams played evenly in a high-scoring second quarter, Brooklyn never had it within single-digits at halftime.

Of course, it’s not about a win or a loss. Jordi Fernández got the back-end of his roster some valuable playing time, and nobody suffered a devastating injury.

Trendon Watford finished with 15/8/4 and crucially, just one turnover, a pretty impressive showing as a lead ball-handler against a serious team…

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Keon Johnson led the way with 20 points, frequently looking like the best player in black-and-white, adding five boards and six assists with a variety of off-ball cuts and trips to the free-throw line mixed in.

If there was an award for the player who has most thoroughly exemplified Fernández’s mantra of getting “one percent better” every day, Johnson would have to be near the top of the leaderboard. He might have a career in this league yet.

Drew Timme was in a pretty tough position either playing drop coverage or hedging and recovering, and Minnesota attacked him in the pick-and-roll frequently. Though he occasionally made a nice play…

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…it was an overwhelming situation for the rookie in his eighth career game, and Rudy Gobert led the Wolves with a whopping 35 points on plenty of spoon-fed finishes.

Anthony Edwards, who needlessly picked up his 16th technical foul to get himself suspended for Minnesota’s next and final game, got to otherwise chill, scoring just nine points. Julius Randle scored 21.

Despite the inevitability of the final outcome, Brooklyn — and stop me if you’ve heard this one before — played 48 tough minutes. They won the possession battle thanks to consistent effort on the offensive glass, and took a respectable chunk out of Minnesota’s game-high 28-point lead before giving it back in garbage time.

Though Keon Johnson didn’t play in the fourth quarter, four other Nets scored in double-figures, including Reece Beekman and Jalen Wilson, who has used the final fortnight of Brooklyn’s season to juice his 3-point percentage up to a still-middling 33.

For everybody but Jordi Fernández, who called a timeout with three minutes left to give the referees a piece of his mind, it feels like the end of the season. It’s hard to even work up disappointment when Dariq Whitehead does anything other than take a catch-and-shoot three…

The Brooklyn Nets normally omnipresent social media team posted nary a highlight on Friday night, and something tells me Nets fans will find a way to live with that. We’re almost there, guys.

Final Score: Minnesota Timberwolves 117, Brooklyn Nets 91

Milestone Watch

  • Jalen Wilson hit Brooklyn’s first 3-pointer of the game Friday, which was Brooklyn’s 1,090th three of the season. That marks a new franchise record for 3-pointers, passing last year’s mark. They have hit more threes as a team this season than they the first dozen years combined that the 3-point line existed in the NBA.
  • Speaking of Wilson, he’s made the fourth-most 3-pointers of any sophomore in Nets history.
  • Friday night marked the second 20/5/5 game of Keon Johnson’s career. His 8-of-8 mark from the line also represents career-highs in both makes and attempts.

Next Up

Phoenix Suns v New York Knicks
Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

One more game at Barclays Center. As mentioned, the Brooklyn Nets have clinched the sixth-best NBA Draft Lottery odds, and the New York Knicks have clinched the East’s three-seed entering the playoffs. Neither team has anything to gain or lose in this one, other than pride, so we’ll see how it’s played.

Tip-off is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. ET on Sunday afternoon.