Kevin Durant scores 26 of 43 points in third quarter to lead Nets to 6th straight win
Nets forward Kevin Durant shoots against Pistons forward Kevin Knox II, left, during the second half of an NBA game Sunday in Detroit. Credit: Duane Burleson
DETROIT — Three minutes? What can happen in three minutes?
The answer is plenty if Kevin Durant is on your team. He exploded for 20 points in the final 3:03 of the third quarter to lead the Nets to a 124-121 win over the Pistons at Little Caesars Arena on Sunday night.
Durant scored 26 of his 43 points in the third, the highest-scoring quarter of his career.
He closed out the game by making two free throws with 9.3 seconds left and rebounding a blocked three-pointer by Bojan Bogdanovic with 2.1 seconds left.
“And you thought the World Cup was exciting,” said coach Jacque Vaughn, whose team improved to 19-12 and extended its winning streak to six games.
Durant is a meticulous stathead who can tell you at almost any point in the game how many points he has and how many shots he has taken. That was not the case in the third quarter.
“I usually know how many shot attempts I’ve had. When I forget, that’s when I’m super, super in the zone,” Durant said. “I felt the ball was coming into my hands so fast that I couldn’t even process it in my mind. I looked up and I’m like, I have 39? I didn’t know.”
Durant shot 8-for-10 in the quarter and made three consecutive three-pointers in the final 50 seconds.
Vaughn believes that it’s quite possible that the 34-year-old Durant, who is in his 16th season, is playing the best basketball of his career.
“You know, the teams throw everything at [him]. And so that’s a piece of it,” Vaughn said. “I think it warrants that conversation. You look at the stat sheet and it’s a very efficient night. And so it’s an incredible task to do when the defense is geared at you every night. I love it that he’s doing it multiple ways.”
Kyrie Irving, who hit the winning shot on Friday night in Toronto, had 28 points.
“When Kev’s out of the game and I’m in, we hold each other to the utmost accountability,” Irving said. “If he gets the lead back or he lets go of the lead, we look each other in the eyes like man, we’ve gotta be better or just continue this.”
The Pistons (8-24) had six players in double figures. Bogdanovic scored 26 points and rookie Jaden Ivey added 19.
Durant’s big night hid the fact that the Nets shouldn’t have been struggling in the first half against a team the caliber of the Pistons.
Vaughn has been in the league long enough to know a potential trap game when he sees one. It doesn’t matter how well you are playing; a team with eight wins that is without injured top scorer Cade Cunningham isn’t one that necessarily inspires opponents to bring their best game.
“Yeah, this is a great test for us,” Vaughn said before the game. “Are we really re-engaged from the beginning of the game? It’s against a team that plays extremely hard, well-coached, young guys who will look forward to playing against our guys. So, a good challenge.”
The Nets failed the test badly in the first half. The Pistons jumped out to a double-digit lead halfway through the first quarter and led by as many as 19.
“We were trying to get over the hump the whole game,” Durant said. “When you are down 15, 16, you just want to break that 10-point mark, get it under 10 and see where you are from there.”
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
