CHICAGO _ Playing without injured Kyrie Irving for the first time this season Saturday night at United Center, the Nets rallied down the stretch behind 20 fourth-quarter points from Spencer Dinwiddie for a 117-111 victory over the Bulls. The win ended a three-game Nets losing streak and gave them a 2-3 record at the end of their five-game road trip.
Early in the fourth period, the Nets regained an 80-79 lead on a dunk by DeAndre Jordan with 10:23 left. The teams traded the lead four times and were tied at 86 when the Nets put together a 13-6 surge to take a 99-92 lead on a Taurean Prince three-pointer with 3:43 to play. Dinwiddie had six points in that stretch, and when he made three fouls shots at the 1:35 mark, it pushed the Nets' lead to 105-96.
Seven straight Bulls points by Zach Lavine cut their deficit to 109-105 with 28.1 seconds left, and a Lauri Markkanen's three-pointer made it a two-point game with 9.5 seconds left.
The Nets (5-7) hit their final 15 foul shots in the final period. Dinwiddie had 24 points and Joe Harris added 22. But the Nets were only 10-for-43 on three-point attempts (23.3 percent) and were outrebounded, 56-40. Lavine led the Bulls (4-9) with 36 points, Wendell Carter Jr. had 18 points and 14 rebounds, and Markkanen had 16 and 10.
Absent Irving and Caris LeVert (foot), Dinwiddie figured to shoulder the kind of load he did last season after LeVert was hurt for 42 games.
"He's one of our best players," Nets coach Kenny Atkinson said of Dinwiddie. "We need him, especially with Caris out. And now, you've got Kyrie out. Without taking it all on his shoulders, he's really stepped up in the past.
"But just without Caris in general going forward these next five weeks, we really need him to step up. Spencer ... you can give him the ball and give him that confidence and I think he plays better."
The Nets could not have gotten off to a better start, fashioning an early 18-6 run, including seven points apiece from Harris and Allen to grab an early 23-10 lead. They finished the period with a 30-19 advantage as Theo Pinson came off the bench for five first-period points as backup to Dinwiddie. That was the fewest points allowed by the Nets in the first quarter this season.
But the Nets' bench unit faltered at the start of the second period as the Bulls launched a 23-5 run with help from seven points by Coby White and six Nets turnovers as Chicago grabbed a 42-35 lead. The Bulls pushed their lead as high as 11 points after a Markkanen three late in the second period, and they settled for a 56-50 halftime margin. At that point, they were outrebounding the Nets 34-17 and outscoring them on second-chance points, 15-3.
Atkinson's pregame remarks about the Nets' struggles seemed prescient at halftime. "We're having these bad stretches," Atkinson said. "When we're playing well, we're defending well and we're rebounding really well. Offensively, we're taking care of the ball really well and then we're sharing it. Those are kind of our hallmarks. And there are periods right now where that's going kind of astray."
Matters got more complicated for the Nets when Dinwiddie, Temple and Taurean Prince each picked up their fourth fouls in the first five minutes of the third period and had to sit down. With rookie Nic Claxton, second-year men Dzanen Musa and Theo Pinson coming off the bench, the Nets looked more like a summer league team with so much youth.
Iman Shumpert also saw his first action with the Nets since signing on Monday, and he scored five straight points to tie the game at 73 near the end of the third period, which finished with the Bulls clinging to a 78-74 margin.
