Nets at Hawks
The Brooklyn Nets are pulling out of their funk with wins in the last two games to stay over .500 and off the postseason bubble in the Eastern Conference. The Nets will try to make it three in a row when they begin a stretch with eight of nine on the road by visiting the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday.
Brooklyn dropped three in a row to fall below .500 before picking on a pair of teams outside the playoff race with home wins over the Dallas Mavericks and Cleveland Cavaliers. "They just keep coming at you," Cavaliers forward Kevin Love told reporters after falling to the Nets 113-107 on Wednesday. "I think their guards really set the tone for them. They're playing downhill, they play for each other, they set screens for each other. You saw that at the start of the fourth quarter when they went on that run, and we just couldn’t fight our way back at the end." The Hawks are not in the playoff race but are building for the future and getting positive returns from their young players. Atlanta took a pair of playoff contenders down to the wire in losses to Miami and San Antonio in the last two games as rookie point guard Trae Young led the offense.
TV: 7 p.m. ET, YES (Brooklyn), FS Southeast (Atlanta)
ABOUT THE NETS (34-33): Brooklyn went 6-8 in 14 games guard Spencer Dinwiddie missed with a thumb injury and dropped the first two after his return as he struggled to shake off the rust. Dinwiddie looked more like himself in the past two games and scored 12 of his 28 points Wednesday in the fourth quarter to lead the Nets to the win. "I think being a young group and finally getting healthy, we're going to continue to find ourselves," Dinwiddie told Newsday. "It's been an exploratory process this whole season, and we're hopefully entering the final phase of that. We can tighten the screws and get to where we need to go the last (15) games and be a force in the playoffs."
ABOUT THE HAWKS (22-44): Young is averaging 28.1 points over the last nine games, including a 49-point outburst in a quadruple-overtime loss to the Chicago Bulls on March 1. The 20-year-old Oklahoma product cooled off a bit since that season high and struggled with his shot against the Heat and Spurs, shooting a combined 12-of-35 from the floor and 1-of-11 from beyond the arc. Power forward John Collins, 21, leads the team in scoring at an average of 19.4 points and returned from a three-game absence (illness) on Wednesday with 18 points and 10 rebounds in 25 minutes against San Antonio.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Hawks SG/SF Vince Carter, 42, indicated he'd like to return next year for his 22nd season.
2. Nets SG Treveon Graham (back) sat out the last two games and is day-to-day.
3. Brooklyn took the first two meetings this season by an average of 16.5 points.