Before Monday, 17 seasons worth of Nets teams - hailing from either New Jersey or Brooklyn -- had come to San Antonio for a regular-season NBA game.
All 17 left in defeat.
Of course, those Nets teams did not have James Harden and Kyrie Irving playing together.
They did not have Bruce Brown or Nicolas Claxton, either.
That combination was enough to lift Brooklyn to a 124-113 victory that snapped the club’s Alamo City curse.
It came against a Spurs squad with five players still unavailable after a COVID-19 outbreak and took overtime to complete.
That says as much about the home team as it does about the Nets.
Harden was brilliant in his first game against the Spurs since being traded from Houston, going for 30 points, 14 rebounds and 15 assists. It was his seventh triple-double since joining Brooklyn on Jan. 23.
Irving was also a handful, putting up 27 points and seven assists.
Brown, in his first season with the Nets after spending two with Detroit, added 23 points. Claxton, a rubber-legged second-year forward who spent most of his rookie season on the injured list, had a career-best 17 points and three blocks from the bench.
Missing five players due to various stages of the NBA’s health and safety protocols - including a pair of starters in Derrick White and Keldon Johnson and two other rotation pieces in Rudy Gay and Devin Vassell - the Spurs battled uphill.
This has become their custom since returning to play after a 10-day COVID-related layoff.
The Spurs are 1-2 in those games, losing to Oklahoma City on a Lu Dort buzzer-beater and then in overtime on Monday to one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference.
Dejounte Murray gave the Spurs a chance late, capping a 10-0 quarter-closing run with a game-tying 20-footer at the horn to force OT.
The Spurs ran out of gas in the extra frame, as the Nets scored the first eight points and ended up winning by double figures.
It is worth wondering how much energy the still-undermanned Spurs might have for Tuesday’s visit from a New York team that is over .500 this late in the season for the first time in almost a decade.
Here are three takeaways from the Spurs’ near-miss Monday, which gave the Nets the franchise’s first Alamo City victory since Game 2 of the 2003 NBA Finals:
The Nets are one otherworldly superstar away from being impossible to guard
Brooklyn won Monday without its leading scorer, though the Nets probably would not have wanted to swap injury reports with the Spurs.
Kevin Durant and his 29 points per game missed his 10th consecutive contest with a hamstring injury.
The Nets improved to 9-1 anyway, because they are pretty darn hard to guard even without him.
When Harden and Irving weren’t taking the scoring into their own hands, they were setting up Claxton or DeAndre Jordan for dunks, or sharpshooter Joe Harris for open 3-pointers.
The Nets rang up 35 assists and made 17 3-pointers. As if Brooklyn’s offensive machine needed extra help, the Nets also snagged 13 offensive rebounds including six from Jordan.
Brooklyn leads the NBA in scoring at 120.8 points per game. The Nets are going to be a handful if they ever get all three of their stars on the floor at the same time for a sustained period.
They kind of already are.
The Spurs don’t usually lose games like this
The Spurs registered 30 assists of their own, which is usually a good sign.
Heading into Monday, they were 168-11 under coach Gregg Popovich when hitting that magic assist number.
Make it 168-12.
Still, the Spurs have to be pleased with the groove they found on offense, even in defeat.
DeMar DeRozan had 22 points and 11 assists, his second consecutive double-double in as many games since returning from his father’s funeral last week.
DeRozan wasn’t quite as efficient as he was in the Spurs’ win over New Orleans on Saturday, when he went for 32 points and 11 assists.
He was 9 of 21, and might have run out of gas after a 7-for-8 start in the first half.
This wasn’t Murray’s best game, and that means progress
There was a time when 19 points, eight assists, six rebounds and the OT-inducing jumper would have meant a fine night for Murray.
The Spurs’ point guard has grown to the point the team expects even more from him.
Murray committed a pair of key turnovers and failed to record a steal for only the third time in the past 14 games.
The decreased activity on defense was a team-wide issue. The Spurs managed only two steals Monday, and turned Brooklyn over only five times.
Both of those numbers matched season opponent lows.
Murray’s big moment came late in the fourth, after Irving missed a chip-shot layup that would have sealed the game in regulation for Brooklyn.
Murray snagged the rebound with five seconds left and scampered the other way. He collided with Harden near the top of the key, neatly lost the ball, then launched a long two-point prayers just before time expired to tie the score at 108.
That play summed up the Spurs’ Monday. It showed their fight, but also gave way to overtime, where they hit a wall.
jmcdonald@express-news.net
Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN
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