Playing their third game in three cities in four nights, Coach Jason Kidd knew his Brooklyn Nets could use some rest on Monday night, particularly following Sunday’s hard-fought overtime win in Dallas. And it appeared early on in Monday’s game against New Orleans that the coach would get a chance to give it to them.

But that chance never came, and Brooklyn wound up running out of gas.

NBA: Brooklyn Nets at Dallas Mavericks

The Nets jumped out to a double-digit lead in the second quarter against the Pelicans and led by as many as 22 early in the third. But a rough finish to the third quarter, which saw Pelicans guard Tyreke Evans light up the Smoothie King Center and cut the Brooklyn lead to three, took away Coach Kidd’s chance to get his starters some rest.

The lead eventually vanished altogether in the fourth and although Brooklyn fought back to force overtime, the Nets simply lacked the energy needed to finish the game in the extra session and went on to lose 109-104, snapping a four-game winning streak. Afterward Coach Kidd noted that Brooklyn’s downfall was the inability to stop Evans and hold onto the big third quarter lead.

“We’re shorthanded, but there’s no excuse. On a back-to-back, we had an opportunity to win a game, it went into overtime, and we just couldn’t get it done,” he said. “We couldn’t control Evans once he got going. Tyreke is a talented player and we kind of just let him get to the basket. We didn’t play a lot of team defense. We didn’t help each other.”

Brooklyn entered the game without forwards Andrei Kirilenko and Kevin Garnett, and it lost guard Marcus Thornton early in the contest to a back injury. But they still used the momentum from Sunday’s victory to jump out to a 26-20 first quarter lead. Paul Pierce and Shaun Livingston each had eight points, and Deron Williams chipped in six through 12 minutes of action.

After a back and forth first, the Nets got rolling in the second. A 9-0 run by the reserve crew early in the frame pushed the lead to double digits. Later in the second, after the starters re-entered the game, Williams got rolling, first hitting a three, then finding Pierce for a triple. After two free throws by Pierce pushed the Brooklyn lead to 19, D-Will knocked down a step-back jumper with 3:15 to go in the half to extend the lead to 21.

At the break, the teams were just about deadlocked in field goal percentage (Brooklyn shot 43.9 percent and New Orleans shot 43.2), but the Nets held a 58-42 halftime edge thanks to a considerable advantage at the free throw line and a defense that forced eight Pelicans turnovers in the first half.

Brooklyn Nets v New Orleans Pelicans

Pierce and Williams teamed up to briefly get the lead back into the 20s early in the third, but Evans willed New Orleans back into the ballgame, scoring 14 of his game-high 33 points in the quarter. His big third included a stretch at the end of the quarter where he scored six points in 36.8 seconds to trim a nine-point Nets lead to three. The Pelicans shot 63.2 percent from the field in the third quarter and 51.2 percent in the second half.

Evans gave New Orleans a five-point lead with 1:14 left in the contest on two made free throws, but a putback dunk by Mason Plumlee and a three-pointer from Pierce with 24.1 seconds remaining tied the score at 98-98, forcing the game to overtime. Afterward, Coach Kidd refuted the idea that the team lost focus in the second half.

“It’s a NBA team. It’s not a lack of focus. It happens. Games have runs,” he said. “They made a run and they took the lead, but we stayed the course, found a way to tie it late in that fourth quarter and gave ourselves an opportunity to try to win in overtime.”

However, New Orleans took control in the overtime period, outscoring the Nets 11-6, thanks in large part to two clutch threes from former Net Anthony Morrow.

“They got good looks

[in overtime] and we didn’t. That’s something we can learn from. There are a lot of positives from this game on a back-to-back for us,” Coach Kidd said. “We executed down the stretch. Out of timeout situations, we got baskets. Late game, we came in defensively and got a stop [to force overtime]. So there are a lot of positives things we can take from this.”

NEXT UP

The Nets (37-32) will take those positives with them over to Charlotte, where they’ll look to bounce back on Wednesday night against a Bobcats (34-37) team they defeated last Wednesday in Brooklyn.

Like in Monday night’s loss, the Nets built an early lead over Charlotte in that game only to watch it dwindle away in the closing minutes. However, behind the excellent late game play of Williams, who finished with a game-high 25 points, Brooklyn was able to secure a 104-99 win.

They’ll try to hold off the Bobcats again on Wednesday in the final meeting of the regular season between the two teams. Opening tip is set for 7 p.m. ET and the game can be viewed on YES Network or via NBA League Pass.

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