MEMPHIS, Tenn. — This was the Jeremy Lin the Nets hoped to see more of when they signed him this offseason.
Lin scored 18 points, including nine straight in a fourth-quarter rally, Sean Kilpatrick added 23 and the Nets won for just the second time in 20 games with a 122-109 victory over the Grizzlies on Monday night. Lin scored 11 points in the final frame.
Isaiah Whitehead scored 15 points, while Randy Foye and Caris LeVert added 14 apiece as the Nets (11-51) shot 53 percent in snapping a two-game losing streak.
“He had some big shots and he made some big shots,” Nets coach Kenny Atkinson said of Lin. “But I thought everyone contributed. … It was really a team victory.”
Mike Conley led Memphis with 32 points, his eighth 30-point game this season.
Modal TriggerJeremy Lin and Sean Kilpatrick during the Nets’ winGetty Images
The teams traded leads until a little more than 4 minutes remained when a dunk by Rondae Hollis-Jefferson started a stretch of eight straight Brooklyn points, part of a 13-2 run for the Nets. Lin scored nine straight in the spurt, including a 3-pointer, to give the Nets a 116-106 lead with 1:43 left.
“We had too many ‘My bads’ and too many ‘We should have done this, we should have done that,’“ said Memphis center Marc Gasol, who had 18 points. “Too many of them. Especially down the stretch.”
The game had 15 lead changes and nine ties, the last lead change coming with Hollis-Jefferson’s dunk. In the game-clinching push, Lin had four straight free throws and a 10-footer before his 3-pointer stretched the lead to 10. Lin said the win is part of an effort to build a new identity for the Nets.
Memphis, which carried a 57-56 lead into intermission, built the advantage to 12 in the third and carried a 91-88 lead into the final quarter.
“We want to develop a nastiness about us. We want to develop a toughness about us. Hopefully, we can continue to build on this.”
