A Night Later, Another Victory for the Nets, This One Much More Impressive

Lionel Hollins, the coach of the Nets, was well aware that none of his team's first seven wins had come against an accomplished opponent.

They beat the Detroit Pistons (who started the night 3-15), the Oklahoma City Thunder (5-13), the Knicks (4-15), the Orlando Magic (7-13) and the Philadelphia 76ers (0-17) - teams going through philosophical metamorphoses, ones decimated by injury, ones that did not seem to be trying particularly hard to win.

To Barclays Center on Wednesday came the San Antonio Spurs, the defending champions, a club riding an eight-game winning streak. The Nets had beaten the Knicks the night before, but that was not much of a test, given the Knicks' poor form. This was a wholly different undertaking.

Before the game, Hollins said, 'Tonight, for me, is a challenge to go out and see if we can beat a team that's plus .500 - we haven't done it yet - and see if we can back up the steps we took last night.'

Hours later, the Nets took a step, a big one, dispatching the Spurs, 95-93, after a tense overtime. The Nets improved to 8-9, but more important, they had a victory of which they could be truly proud.

But it was almost thrown away. The Nets led by as many as 15 points during regulation, but the Spurs clawed all the way back and sent the game to overtime when Danny Green nailed a 3-pointer with just over two seconds left.

The Nets had a 2-point lead and possession of the ball in the waning seconds of overtime, but Bojan Bogdanovic got trapped near half-court and lost control of the ball before it glanced off his body and out of bounds.

That left nine seconds on the clock. Coming out of a timeout, Manu Ginobili found himself open for a straightaway 3-pointer, but it clanged off the rim. A dogpile formed around the loose ball, and the game ended with a jump ball completed with 0.2 seconds on the clock.

Brook Lopez, who was at the bottom of the pile, had 16 points and 15 rebounds, to notch his second double-double of the season. Mirza Teletovic had a double-double before halftime and finished with 26 points and 15 rebounds.

It helped that the Spurs shot only 35.6 percent for the game, compared to the Nets' 41.1.

San Antonio was playing its third game of a four-stop trip, which could have explained the players' lackadaisical mien.

The Spurs led, 42-40, at halftime even though they shot just 37 percent. As the halftime buzzer sounded, a frustrated Tim Duncan (14 points, 17 rebounds) chucked the ball the length of the court, sending it sailing into the seats behind the basket, and walked off the court muttering.

The Nets opened the second half on a 19-4 run to build a 59-46 lead, which forced the Spurs to take a timeout. The Nets outscored the Spurs, 28-16, in the third to complete one of their best quarters of the season.

The Nets did not have the services of Kevin Garnett, who was being rested. This was the Nets' third back-to-back game this season. Garnett played both games of the first one, but he has elected to take the second game off in the last two. Hollins said it had been Garnett's decision.

'It's his body,' Hollins said of Garnett. 'I don't have any input. I hear him say, 'Hey, I'm not going tonight,' and it's, 'O.K., see you tomorrow.' It's not that big of a deal.'

Hollins noted that Gregg Popovich, his counterpart, had been resting players regularly over the years.

Popovich before the game entertained the possibility that Garnett and Duncan, who will go down as two of the best power forwards in the game, would not play another game against one another. This is Duncan's 18th season and Garnett's 20th, and it is conceivable that one or both could retire when the season ends.

'If he's not here tonight, maybe there's never a matchup,' Popovich said when informed Garnett was not playing. 'You know, those two guys have been competing for a long time. Great respect for both of them, obviously. Tremendous, just competitive people, who reached that level when they did it night after night after night.'

REBOUNDS

The teams' rosters consisted of 15 international players from 12 countries and territories, the most of any N.B.A. game this season, the league said. The N.B.A. had 101 players born outside the United States on opening day rosters, the highest total in league history. 'It's pretty obvious that there are players everywhere, so everybody's doing that,' Gregg Popovich said.

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