If only Mikhail Prokhorov could attend every Nets game.
The Russian billionaire watched his team play in person for the first time in more than a year last night from a luxury box above midcourt at Prudential Center. And, for the eighth time in the 10 games he has watched the Nets play since he bought the team in May 2010, he saw a Nets win, this time a 122-117 overtime triumph over the Cavaliers.
“Maybe he just needs to start coming a little bit more,” Deron Williams said with a smile after finishing with 18 points and 10 assists.
Williams wasn’t smiling at the end of regulation when Cleveland’s Lester Hudson, who finished with a career-high 26 points, drained a 3-pointer from the left corner with 0.3 seconds left on the clock. But instead of hanging their heads after letting a chance to take home a victory slipped away, the Nets came out and scored 10 of the first 13 points in overtime.
Cleveland nearly came all the way back to force a second overtime, but Hudson’s 3-point attempt with 7.9 seconds remaining went wanting, and the Nets claimed their fifth win in their last seven games.
“We didn’t expect this game to go into overtime, but it did,” Nets coach Avery Johnson said. “In overtime we got off to a quick start and, like I have been saying all along, this team is a pretty good team.”
The Nets have been playing like a pretty good team for the past two weeks, ever since Johnson called out his team’s professionalism at the end of their 105-84 home loss to the Jazz on March 26. After the team watched the film from that game the next day, the Nets came out and beat the Pacers before playing well while splitting their four-game West Coast trip before picking up a pair of wins since returning home.
“We took that [film session] to heart a little bit,” Williams said. “We watched the film, and guys saw how we ended that game. We felt bad, and there was a bad feeling in the locker room. We have had some good wins since then.”
It wouldn’t be a Nets game without yet another injury, with Gerald Wallace falling victim to the team’s season-long injury woes. Wallace suffered a strained left hamstring in the second quarter after landing awkwardly after slamming home an offensive rebound, and didn’t return.
His injury, however, opened the door for Gerald Green, who stepped in and scored a season-high 32 points, including 19 in the fourth quarter and overtime.
“I know I haven’t been shooting great from the 3-point line the last few games, but it felt good tonight,” said Green, who went 11-for-18 from the field and 5-for-7 from 3-point range. “I didn’t hesitate, just took the shots and tried to make them.”