Brooklyn swingman Bojan Bogdanovic and point guard Shane Larkin combined for 37 points and 17 rebounds off the bench, and the Brooklyn Nets recorded their first triumph of the season, shocking the Houston Rockets 106-98 on Wednesday night at Toyota Center.
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Cory Joseph notched 15 points, DeMar DeRozan had 14 and Jonas Valanciunas contributed 11 points and 12 rebounds for the Raptors, who snapped a three-game losing streak. He has started all six games he’s played, and he’s scoring 17.3 points per game on 47.8 percent shooting, and 39.1 percent from long range. Within a three minute stretch, he had a steal, 11-foot jumper, assist on and alley oop dunk to Howard, driving layup, rebound and putback layup.
“When you get a win, it validates all the preaching and all the working that you’re doing”, Hollins said after the Nets ended a season-opening 0-7 slide with their first win in their last nine visits to Houston dating to March 13, 2006. “With more people in foul trouble, the fewer people you have to play their bigs, the fewer people we have to play him”. “I’m incredibly disappointed at this point, I put in so much work over the summer to make myself a better player”, Chandler said in a statement.
Marcus Thornton got loose on a fast break with only one defender to beat.
The Rockets were stunned by the defeat against previously winless Brooklyn and coach Kevin McHale expressed concern over his team’s performance. I’ve said it all since we’ve been together. Howard had a double-double by halftime with 12 points and 10 rebounds, leading the Rockets’ high scoring in the paint throughout the night. We’ll find a rhythm, we’ll catch a rhythm. His $24.8 million salary made him tough to move in anything more than a complicated three or four-team transaction (only one team, Portland, as the space to deal for him outright), and that was before he fell off. He’s hit on just 33 percent of his shots so far in 2015-16, and those that hoped he’d take a late-season buyout to become a free agent might not want to spend even the minimum to swoop him up. He finished with four rebounds and an assist…. Thaddeus Young added 13 points. It didn’t look like a different team, but it looked a little more like one that has a chance of winning more than, well, one game every eight tries. He had four rebounds…. Beverley returned after missing the last two games with a concussion…. G/F K.J. McDaniels was assigned to Houston’s D-League Rio Grande Valley on Wednesday…. McHale said rookie Sam Dekker is dealing with a back problem, but will likely join McDaniels with Rio Grande Valley when he gets healthy.
Beverley was arrested and briefly detained Wednesday on a misdemeanor warrant for a Houston-area traffic violation before being released when he paid a $321 fine.
I credit Lionel Hollins shaving his beard. “And that’s why I went to jail”. That’s reality. There is not something where it’s, ‘OK, this is the magic wand and we are going to do this and it’s going to change overnight.
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In other local pro sports news, the NY Cosmos punched their ticket to this weekend’s North American Soccer League Championship Final by edging past the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, 2-1, last Saturday at Coney Island’s MCU Park.
