Brooklyn Nets: 3 takeaways from Brooklyn’s biggest comeback win ever

3. No narrow escape in this comeback

Often, when a team roars back from a huge deficit to get a win, that victory comes complete with late heroics, some sort of flurry as the clock winds down.

Not so much for the Brooklyn Nets, who trailed by 19 while there was still more than 33 minutes to play.

After falling behind 46-27 early in the second quarter, Brooklyn outscored the Atlanta Hawks 89-54 the rest of the way and won by 16 points.

At one point late in the game, the Nets actually led by a larger margin than the deficit they had erased.

In taking a trip into the wayback machine to research the last two largest comebacks by the Nets, those other games had a very different feel from this one.

In what had been the largest comeback of the Brooklyn era, a 127-122 double-overtime win over the LA Clippers on Nov. 29, 2016, in a game the Nets trailed by 18 points, the time for the comeback was much more compact.

The Clippers opened an 86-68 lead with two minutes remaining in the third quarter before Brooklyn scored the final five points of the period to cut the margin to 13.

It was actually LA that had to get some heroics late in regulation just to get the game to overtime.

Brook Lopez canned a 3-pointer with 1:11 to go to give the Nets a 107-104 lead. But Brooklyn had trouble closing it out. Sean Kilpatrick turned the ball over on an offensive foul and then missed a long 2-pointer with 12.9 second left.

Chris Paul knocked in a 3-pointer with 1.8 seconds left to force overtime and the Nets survived another late 3 in the first extra session when Jamal Crawford tied the game with 10 seconds left.

Kilpatrick had a chance to win it, but misfired on a short jumper with 0.2 seconds left. In the second overtime, Isaiah Whitehead gave Brooklyn the lead for good with a layup with 47.1 seconds left and Kilpatrick iced it with a finger roll with 13.5 ticks left.

It was the Nets’ biggest comeback since erasing a 19-point gap in the final 16-plus minutes against the Golden State Warriors in Oakland, Calif., on March 30, 2012.

In that game, Gerald Green gave the Nets only their second lead of the game (they led 3-0 early) on a floater with 51.8 seconds left and Gerald Wallace snuffed out a short turnaround jumper by Charles Jenkins with 2.5 seconds to go to preserve the win.

But against Atlanta on Wednesday, there was enough time that the late fireworks were optional.