NEW YORK – Brooklyn Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie yapped at the referees after the first-quarter buzzer for what he felt was a non-call on his strong drive against Minnesota Timberwolves big man Karl-Anthony Towns.
It turned out to be a bad omen.
The Timberwolves escaped with a 107-102 victory over the hard-luck Nets Tuesday night (Wednesday, Manila time) before a disappointed sold-out crowd at the Barclays Center.
Dinwiddie twice missed a potential game-tying 3-pointer inside the final 8.7 seconds. Dinwiddie felt his first attempt, blocked by Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards, was a déjà vu.
“[Edwards] hit me on the elbow,” Dinwiddie said. “You saw it. The funny thing is I just did an interview, and I said my two favorite refs were Kevin Cutler and [Zach] Zarba. That’s ironic, isn’t it? That’s [expletive] hilarious!”
“No, I'm just saying it's the story of what I talked about. But in general, I would like to say that I actually don't change my mind about that. They are two good dudes. But they definitely missed one. Well, several, actually.”
Dinwiddie missed his first four attempts, going scoreless in the opening quarter. But he went 5-of-5 in the second quarter while Dorian Finney-Smith hit his strides from the outside as the Nets overhauled a seven-point deficit, turning it into a 54-51 lead at halftime.
The game, marked by 24 lead changes, went back and forth from there.
Dinwiddie, who led the Nets with 30 points and six assists, tied the game for the final time with a layup at the century mark with 1:23 left to play.
Towns (22 points and 14 rebounds) and Edwards (23 points and five rebounds) hit four free throws that sandwiched a Finney-Smith miss for a 104-100 Minnesota lead.
Dinwiddie, however, refused to lose quickly, cutting the deficit to two with a layup in the final 14 seconds.
A Mike Conley charity split opened the door for the Nets to send the game into overtime.
Then Dinwiddie ran out of steam. But in his eyes, he got the short end of the stick.
Nets coach Jacque Vaughn wasn’t sure about it.
“We got two shots up. Whether or not Spencer got fouled on the first one, not sure about that, but from our angle, it felt like Spencer reacted as if he did get fouled on the way up. So, we got to look at it.”
“I think our execution was good. We saved our timeout. We got a quick two at the end of the game. Conley ended up missing a free throw, so [it was a] great position for us to be in. The execution was pretty good down the stretch.”
Only it wasn’t completed with a made basket.
The loss kept the Nets from clinching the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference. Their lead over Miami Heat, who beat the lottery-bound Detroit Pistons on the same night, shrunk to one game.
The Nets and Heat have three games left.
The chase for the East’s final outright playoff berth will go down to the wire.
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Alder Almo is a former senior sportswriter for Philstar.com and NBA.com Philippines. He is now based in Jersey City, New Jersey, and writes for the New York-based website Heavy.com.