SAN FRANCISCO — This Western swing was always going to be a tough trip for the Nets.
Saturday night’s 124-120 defeat at Golden State ensured it would be a losing one.
The Nets (13-12) wasted a brilliant 41-point outing from Cam Thomas in front of a sellout crowd of 18,064 at Chase Center, and have lost three of their first four games on this swing, with just Monday in Utah left.
“Yes, a great part about playing on the road is the adversity that you face — whether the other night planning the back-to-back, whether it’s playing high-level teams and having a lesser margin for error,” Brooklyn coach Jacque Vaughn said. “Again, you’re in a position where if you don’t have the mental fortitude to move on to the next play, you will pay for it in multiple ways.”
Obviously their margin is wafer-thin.
Thomas had a sixth 40-point game by the age of 22, surpassing Bernard King for the most in franchise history. Spencer Dinwiddie had 16 points, handed out a season-high 14 assists with just two turnovers, while center Nic Claxton had 19 points, 12 rebounds and a season-high-tying four blocks.
And it wasn’t enough.
Golden State (11-14) had played a league-high 20 “clutch games” — tilts within five points in the final five minutes of regulation or overtime. And they knew how to pull this one out.
Stephen Curry had 37 points on 6-for-8 shooting from deep.
He cracked the 3,500 mark for career 3-pointers and hit from downtown in a 268th straight regular season game — both NBA records.
And he made the killer daggers from deep in the final stages.
“That’s the moving on to the next possession [element],” Vaughn said. “He’s going to make shots that other human beings just can’t make, and make plays that other human beings can’t make. So can you have multiple efforts throughout the course of the night, play with a sense of physicality throughout the course of the night, and then move on to the next possession; just because it’s imperative for us to play with the pace tonight and make or miss really get the ball up the floor.”
Leading 17-16 on a Cam Johnson drive, the Nets surrendered a quick 6-0 mini-run to fall behind by five when Chris Paul found Dario Saric for a 3-pointer.
The deficit was seven when the Nets allowed an 11-0 two-minute blitz.
Down 55-48 after a Claxton layup, Brooklyn missed four straight shots and committed a couple of turnovers, quickly losing contact.
The deficit bloated to 66-48 on a Jonathan Kuminga putback with 2:21 left in the first half.
It was still an 18-point deficit early in the third, before Brooklyn slowly and inexorably shaved that hole in half with less than a minute remaining in the quarter.
Royce O’Neale and Thomas sandwiched 3-pointers around a Paul miss to get the Nets within 92-89 with a half-minute left in the third.
And after a quiet start to the night — three points at halftime on 1-for-6 shooting — Mikal Bridges drilled a left-corner 3-pointer to finally put the Nets ahead 99-97 with 9:12 to play.
But with the score knotted at 106-all, Curry untied it.
He hit from 27 feet, then — after Brandin Podziemski stole a bad Bridges pass — a 30-footer that sent the Nets scurrying into a timeout.
It didn’t help.
Thomas lost the ball — another Podziemski theft — and Curry’s midrange jumper left Brooklyn down 114-106 with 4:34 in regulation.
O’Neale pulled Brooklyn within 120-118 with two minutes left, but no closer.
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