Great players rarely have two straight off games. Tuesday night gave the world a reminder: Kyrie Irving is one of the all-time greats.
This is what happens when Irving, fresh off a subjectively average game in the Nets’ loss in Boston, plays like the star he’s proven to be. He hung a season-high in both points scored and threes made on the Hornets in a must-win game to power the Nets to a 132-121 victory in Charlotte on Tuesday.
Irving came out a man on fire, quite possibly because he matched up against Terry Rozier – his former backup point guard in Boston, the scorer who believed he sacrificed the most by Irving’s arrival via trade to the Celtics five seasons ago. The Nets All-Star reminded Rozier there are levels to basketball: He hit seven of his first eight three-point attempts and hit a season-high nine threes en route to 50 points, the most allowed by a Hornets opponent all season.
It was his fifth career 50-point game and the third time he’s hung half-a-hundo as a member of the Nets.
Irving’s breakout game was particularly encouraging: He scored just 19 points on 8-of-18 shooting in Boston in a loss to the Celtics, and it was the first set of consecutive games he and Kevin Durant have played all season.
Irving and Durant traded places: The Nets’ MVP candidate scored just 14 points on 13 shots and turned the ball over four times to his seven assists, but Irving’s star shined bright enough to deliver the Nets a critical win on Tuesday.
Brooklyn built a lead as large as 34 points, in large part due to the Hornets’ own incompetence. Charlotte was not home to a professional basketball team on Tuesday. Instead, it looked like a bunch of kids on an AAU basketball team playing pickup basketball. The Hornets exhibited little concern for taking care of the ball, generating quality offense or playing with the intensity required in a game with play-in tournament seeding implications.
The win for Brooklyn was important, regardless of the lack of respect for the game shown by the Hornets. It moved the Nets (33-33) firmly in front of the Hornets (32-34) for the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference. The win also ties the Nets and Hornets at one win apiece in their season series. The two teams play one more time on March 27 at Barclays Center, where Irving cannot play due to his status as unvaccinated in a city with a private sector vaccination mandate.
The Nets still remain two games behind the No. 7 seeded Toronto Raptors (34-30). They are five games behind the sixth-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers, meaning they would need to win five more games than the Cavs in the final 16 games of the season to claw out of the play-in tournament.
That won’t be likely, however, if they cannot find a way to beat zone defenses and the full-court press. The Hornets chopped into the Nets’ lead in the third quarter via a 20-4 run by switching back to a zone defense. The Nets also struggled to beat a zone defense in their disappointing loss to a Miami Heat team without four of their best players at Barclays Center on Thursday.
The Hornets’ unpredictable second-half defense, plus some carelessness and complacency from the Nets, chopped a 34-point Nets lead down to as little as 13 in the fourth quarter. That’s when Irving danced around Hornets’ forward P.J. Washington, then hit a shot clock-beating jumper that kept Charlotte at bay with under four minutes to go in the final period.
Which brings us back to New York City, where Irving’s theatrics and heroics are unavailable. Mayor Adams repealed the Key2NYC vaccine mandate, but the private sector mandate allows Irving to walk into Barclays Center and sit with his teammates. He just can’t take the two steps forward from the bench onto the floor to compete in games – even though unvaccinated players from opposing teams don’t have to abide by such rules.
Under the current mandate, Irving is only eligible to play in five more games for the Nets this season. Tuesday’s performance is a reminder of what fans in Brooklyn don’t get to see.
A great player, who rarely has two off games in a row.
