LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Brooklyn’s Royce O’Neale notched a triple-double that included the game-winning tip-in in the last second Thursday as the Nets beat the National Basketball Association’s West-leading Trail Blazers 109-107 in Portland.
Kevin Durant led the Nets with 35 points. O’Neale scored 11 points with 10 rebounds and 11 assists and Ben Simmons scored 15 points with 13 rebounds for his first double-double since joining the Nets.
Yuta Watanabe added 20 points off the bench for the Nets, who finished out their four-game Western road swing at 2-2 and reportedly can look forward to the return of suspended Kyrie Irving when they host Memphis on Sunday.
Durant became the 19th NBA player to reach 26,000 career points, and the first since Michael Jordan in 1988-89 to begin the season with 13 straight 25-point games.
But when his turnaround jump shot with 2.2 seconds remaining and the teams tied at 107-107 didn’t fall it was O’Neale to the rescue.
The Nets veteran tipped it in with seven-tenths of a second remaining to seal a hard-fought victory.
Watanabe’s contribution included a three-pointer that put the Nets up by three going into the fourth quarter.
The Trail Blazers, led by 25 points from Damian Lillard, had taken a five-point lead with less than nine minutes remaining, but after they wasted a pair of possessions Durant put the Nets up 97-95.
Another Watanabe three-pointer put the Nets up 106-101 with 1:47 left but the Blazers kept battling, Jusuf Nurkic converting a three-point play to tie it up again at 107-107 with 6.5 seconds left.
“If a coach could draw up a game that ended with a win at the last moment, that was it,” Nets coach Jacque Vaughn said. “We didn’t panic. A group grows that way.”
