Holy cow! Randy Foye! What a shot, what a win. The win did not come at a cost, though. The story that Foye stole was Jeremy Lin’s. Lin left the game in the third quarter with a left hamstring injury. Yes, it is the same one from the five week absence. Yes, this is bad news.
Before going down with his injury, Lin had 17 points, four assists, and two steals. He was just starting to look good again when this injury happened. Despite the bad vibes given from Lin’s injury reoccurring, Brooklyn never gave up hope and fight.
Brooklyn outscored the Hornets by seven points in the final quarter to solidify their victory. Down one as time was expiring, Randy Foye took a fade away shot that was nailed as the clock struck triple zeros. This was the only shot Foye hit on the night and his only three points. This was also Foye’s second career buzzer beater for a win, the other also a three ball.
Every ? Single ? Angle ? @RandyFoye #BrooklynGrit https://t.co/y79Y4JuanX
— Brooklyn Nets (@BrooklynNets) December 27, 2016
Proud of the squad!! @randyfoye you deserve every bit of what you did man…true vet, awesome friend! And ty for your prayers! #BrooklynGrit pic.twitter.com/CMi0X3Sd9u
— Jeremy Lin (@JLin7) December 27, 2016
The leading scorer in this game was Bojan Bogdanovic. Off of the bench, Bogie scored 26 points on 7-11 shooting and 4-7 from long range. Bogie has seemingly found his shot again, which is great news. For Charlotte, Nicolas Batum led the way with 24 points.
Brooklyn shot really well on the night as they shot 53.3% from the field and 48.4% from long range (15-31). Charlotte did not have a terrible night as they shot 46.8% form the field themselves. This was a really close game and it could have gone either way. Luckily, we had a confident Randy Foye shooting the ball at the end.
Grading the Players
Randy Foye, Bojan Bogdanovic, Sean Kilpatrick, and Brook Lopez all get an A on the night. Randy Foye is an obvious; he won us the game. Bojan Bogdanovic is also pretty obvious as he led all scorers with 26 on 7-11, 4-7 shooting. Bogdanovic was also a slaher and aggressive tonight, going 8-9 from the free-throw line. Bojan came off of the bench tonight and he showed Coach Atkinson he should be starting with this performance.
Sean Kilpatrick scored 23 points on 9-15 shooting and 4-7 from deep. Kilpatrick had a great night shooting the ball and kept letting it fly. Brooklyn will never have issues with Kilpatrick feeling hot, being hot, and taking shots.
Brook Lopez, as usual, plays well. Lopez scored 21 points on 8-13 shooting to go along with five rebounds, five assists, and three blocked shots. Brook is having a good season in the blocked shots category so far. Hopefully he can keep it up as it seems to be one of the only sources of defense from Brooklyn.
Caris LeVert gets a B on the night. He has not seen too many minutes of late nor has he, in result, been that productive. Tonight, though, the rookie from Michigan played 15 minutes and went 2-3 form the floor and 1-2 from long range. LeVert did not get a steal tonight, which is seemingly rare for him. He also only added in one rebound and one assist. The rookie is developing, and it seems to be going well so far.
Joe Harris gets one of the only deserving low grades on the night with an F. Harris got the start of Bojan Bogdanovic, but only played 12 minutes. Harris missed both attempts form the field and scored zero points and only grabbed two rebounds. This was Harris’ golden opportunity, and he blew it. Unfortunately, it was also bad timing as Bojan went off tonight. Harris will more than likely return to the bench in favor of Bojan.
Brooklyn improves to 8-22 on the season with this win. Coming up next is a battle against the Chicago Bulls in Chicago Wednesday night. Charlotte drops to 17-14 on the season and snaps their three game winning streak with this loss. For Charlotte, they travel to Orlando to take on the Magic also on Wednesday night.