With the Nets up 11 in the second quarter of last night’s game with the Clippers, Blake Griffin had an opportunity to throw down a dunk off of a fast break. Devin Harris caught Griffin and kept the dunk from being attempted, but paid the price of ejection for his hard foul. In his absence, the Nets, who have often looked out-of-sorts when their star point guard is not on the floor, banded together and finished off the Clippers for a 110-96 win Los Angeles last night.
Harris had already racked up eight points and seven assists in 14 minutes before he was hit with a grade-2 flagrant foul. Just as Griffin was about to jump, Harris came down on him with both arms so that Griffin could not raise his arms to attempt the shot. The Clippers’ rookie suffered a hard fall to the ground, banging his knee on the court and staying down for a few minutes. After a brief review, the flagrant foul was assessed and Harris left the court. After the game, Harris said there was no intent to injure Griffin, and Griffin stated that he felt there was no malice on the part of Harris.
But once Griffin got up and appeared to be OK, it seemed that Harris may have unintentionally done more damage to his team than he did to Griffin. The Nets (4-6) responded, however, to bounce back from their difficult one-point loss to the Magic on Saturday.
The most vital performance in Harris’ absence may have been that of backup point guard Jordan Farmar, who finished with 15 points on 5-of-11 shooting, 12 assists and two steals in 35 minutes.
Brook Lopez, who seems to have emerged from his early-November slump, went 10-of-16 from the field for a team-high 24 points. Lopez’s frontcourt mate Kris Humphries, getting his second-straight start at power forward, shot 5-for-7 while tallying 13 points and 12 rebounds.
Travis Outlaw continued his red-hot shooting, hitting on nine of his 14 shots, including four out of six from 3-point range, for 23 points. Outlaw has converted 21 of 37 3-point attempts (56.8 percent) on the season. As a team, the Nets shot a scorching 43-of-72 (just shy of 60 percent).
The Clippers’ (1-10) sub-40-percent shooting performance, meanwhile, negated Eric Gordon actually taking more attempts from the free throw line (20) than all of the Nets combined (19). Gordon finished with 30 points, but was just 6-of-20 from the field. His backcourt mate, rookie Eric Bledsoe, also struggled from the field, adding 15 points on 6-of-16 shooting. Starting forwards Al-Farouq Aminu and Griffin chipped in 14 and 11 points, respectively.
Notes: Undrafted Nets rookie Ben Uzoh made his professional debut, spelling Farmar for six minutes. He did not attempt a shot, but grabbed two rebounds … Terrence Williams missed his fourth straight game with an abdominal injury, leading to a season high in playing time for swingman Stephen Graham. In 25 minutes, he scored six points and dished out five assists … After playing eight minutes on Saturday in his return from a foot injury, Troy Murphy was held out of Monday’s contest … The Nets will play the second game of their four-game Western Conference road trip on Wednesday night when they travel to Salt Lake City to take on the Utah Jazz.