LONDON — Whenever the Nets need a game-winning basket, they know to call Joe Johnson’s number.
But, with a brilliant first half Thursday, Johnson made sure it wouldn’t come to that.
Johnson’s game-high 29 points — including 26 before halftime — led a brilliant team-wide offensive display that helped the suddenly streaking Nets easily dispatch the Hawks, 127-110, in front of a sellout crowd at O2 Arena.
Johnson’s night left his teammates impressed.
“It’s beautiful to watch,” said Paul Pierce, who finished with 18 points and six assists. “As a player, me and Kevin [Garnett] have had days where we’d be hot, but we were the only player on that team. Now when you have a teammate [like this], you’re like ‘Wow, he’s in the zone.’
“It’s fun to watch and you really feed off of that, because you’ve been used to being that guy your whole career, so when you have a teammate who can do that, it’s fun. I feed off of it. Teammates feed off of it. The crowd feeds off of it and the good part about is the guys want him to keep going.
“It’s a joy to be a part of.”
Johnson’s explosion in the first half — he made 10 of his 13 shots from the field, including 5 of 7 from 3-point range — helped the Nets (16-22), who are now 6-1 since the calendar flipped to 2014, to open a 12-point halftime lead. His 3-pointer at the buzzer capped a 23-10 run to close the third quarter and sent the Nets into the fourth with a 25-point lead. That allowed them to leave their key players on the bench for virtually the rest of the game.
“We just exploited the mismatches and feeding off these guys for a while, getting in the lane,” Johnson said. “We played a lot off Paul in the second quarter with him posting up, and he’d pass to the weak side. We had great ball movement and I just hit open shots.”
As hot as Johnson was, he was far from the only player to get it going offensively. The Nets shot 58.2 percent from the field and went 16-for-27 (59.3 percent) from 3-point range. They finished with 53 field goals, going over 50 in a game for the first time since March 18, 2009, against the Knicks, and also had a season-high of 38 assists.
After capping an eventful week with a victory, the Nets will now head back to New York on Friday and, after getting Friday and Saturday off to recover from the trip, will return to the gym Sunday to get ready to face the Knicks in a Martin Luther King Day matinee Monday. Things are looking completely different than they were just two weeks ago, when they started off the new year with their come-from-behind victory over the Thunder in Oklahoma City.
“The credit goes to those guys,” Nets coach Jason Kidd said. “They had appearances, we had two practices, they had time commitments where they had to be at different places, and they never complained.
“They did everything we’ve asked from them on this trip, and the result was getting a [win], and that’s what we came for. The guys now have to turn the page, pack their bags and head back home and get ready for New York.”