John Minchillo/Associated Press
Nets guard Joe Johnson after his shot at the end of double overtime. "We were going to give him the ball and ride his back," Coach Avery Johnson said.
The return of Brook Lopez to the Nets' lineup Friday did not cure all the ills of a slumping team overnight. Most of the Nets' thrilling 107-105 win over the Detroit Pistons in double overtime occurred with Lopez on the bench.
The Nets have other, deeper wrinkles to iron out, ones that nearly cost them a winnable game against a middling opponent. The home crowd was growing restless. A 17-point lead dissipated in the second half. But when the final buzzer sounded, Joe Johnson's winning fallaway jumper had just swished through the net.
Coach Avery Johnson has called for "breakthrough wins" for this revamped franchise — and seemed to get them in earlier victories over the Boston Celtics and the Knicks — but neither featured the dramatic endurance test of Friday's marathon, or the uplifting finish.
"Sometimes games like this can energize a team," Johnson said.
With five seconds left in double overtime, the Pistons' Kyle Singler tied the score by putting back an offensive rebound that glanced off the hands of Nets forward Kris Humphries. But the Nets (13-9) had one more opportunity, and Joe Johnson hit his jumper over Tayshaun Prince as time expired.
"When it left my hand, I knew it was going in," Johnson said. "I'm just glad we could get out of here with the win."
It was the Nets' first buzzer-beater victory since February 2009, and it snapped a four-game losing streak at Barclays Center. It featured a back-and-forth second half, after the Nets built up a large early lead, surrendered it, then traded chances with the Pistons (7-18) to win the game down the stretch.
The Nets trailed, 37-33, with 7 minutes 48 seconds left in the first half when Johnson hit a 3-pointer from the corner. That ignited the Nets' offense. They hit their next eight field-goal attempts and ran out to a 54-38 lead.
Finally, after a missed hook shot by Andray Blatche, Prince's layup ended the Nets' 21-1 streak with less than two minutes before halftime. It was the Pistons' first field goal in almost six minutes. The Nets' lead eventually reached 17.
The Nets shot 60.8 percent — including 5 of 9 from 3-point range — and scored a season-high 36 points in the second quarter.
After intermission, the Nets relaxed. The defense lagged and the hot shooting chilled.
Detroit, among the worst shooting teams in the league, went on a 21-7 run to retake the lead. The Pistons' frontcourt tandem of Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe outrebounded the Nets inside, and guard Rodney Stuckey gave Detroit some punch off the bench.
Detroit outscored Brooklyn, 30-14, in the third quarter.
With the Nets down by 2 late in regulation, Wallace's left-handed tip-in with 20.7 seconds remaining tied the score at 90-90. In the first overtime, Stuckey hit a floater with 41.4 seconds left to tie the score at 100-100, then missed a pull-up jumper for a chance to win with 2.9 seconds left.
In the second overtime, Johnson hit a runner with 26.2 seconds left to give the Nets a 104-103 lead, but a few seconds later he missed one of two free throws to leave the door open for Singler, who slipped into the paint and nimbly put back the Humphries deflection.
With five seconds left, the Nets swung the ball to Johnson. He dribbled out the clock and pulled up near the top of the key.
"It wasn't no secret that we were going to give him the ball and ride his back," Avery Johnson said. "That's what we're looking for from Joe."
The return of Lopez, the Nets' starting center, became an afterthought, but it does provide the Nets with needed stability going forward. He made it through the game without any hitches, finishing with 9 points and 3 blocks in nearly 24 minutes. Johnson said he would evaluate whether Lopez would sit out Saturday's game in Chicago.
The Nets are being especially cautious with his foot, after multiple injuries kept him sidelined almost all of last season. He had surgery to repair a stress fracture in his foot last December, then sprained his ankle in March. Another CT scan revealed that the original stress fracture had not completely healed.
Lopez has said that the injury this year is dissimilar, but the Nets are not taking any chances with their 7-foot centerpiece. Now the team can try to work him back into the fold.
They were 2-5 without him and are now 11-4 with him in the lineup. And they will take the wins any way they come.
"I don't think anybody wanted to play a third overtime," guard Deron Williams said, adding about Johnson, "I guess he knew we needed to get to Chicago."
EXTRA POINTS
Avery Johnson said guard Jerry Stackhouse was expected to miss two games with a sore right knee. Stackhouse apparently injured the knee in Tuesday's game against the Knicks.
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