Brooklyn Nets: Player grades from 113-107 win at Madison Square Garden
By Phil Watson
Spencer Dinwiddie closed the preseason well, scoring a game-high 19 points after struggling from the field through the first three preseason games.
Dinwiddie worked the glass well at the defensive end, was solid for the most part defensively, made his free throws and backed up his talk about the Brooklyn Nets being the better team in New York.
After hitting just 28 percent of his shots in the first three preseason games, Dinwiddie was a solid 6-for-11 on Friday and canned a pair of 3-pointers in five attempts after missing nine of 10 in the initial three games.
It was a pretty good dress rehearsal with the regular season on the horizon.
Caris LeVert is known much more as a slasher than as a shooter. So it was a strange night for the third-year pro on Friday, when he was lights-out from 3-point range, going 4-for-6, but couldn’t buy a bucket inside the oddly-shaped stripe.
He worked hard on the defensive end, and a couple of the five fouls he picked up could have been no-calls (sometimes, that’s just how the proverbial cookie crumbles), but he did a better job taking care of the rock and was conscientious about moving the basketball when an opening wasn’t there.
He didn’t have the touch when he was able to get into the lane and create, but if that’s something LeVert has shown is an exception rather than a rule. In all, a plus performance.