Brooklyn Nets cruised past Atlanta Hawks, 127-110, at the O2 Arena on Thursday night, led by an inspired 26 point first half performance from Joe Johnson.
It means the Nets remain undefeated in London, improving to 3-0 as Johnson smoked his former team out, going 10/13 in the first half.
“We just exploited mismatches. I was just feeding off these guys,” Johnson said. “We had a lot of ball movement and took a lot of open shots.”
“We’ve got the best seat in the house,” Garnett said on taking in Johnson’s performances. “When you’re so used to being in that situation yourself, it’s great to have a guy who can just take over the game.”
One of the loudest cheers of the night came when Hawks guard Kyle Korver extended his NBA record to 108 straight games with a 3-pointer, aside from that, it was a rough outing for Atlanta, the designated home team.
Notes
Deputy Commissioner (soon to take over from Stern) said the NBA Regular season game in London will remain an annual thing, and also said they will “possibly do a tournament at some point”.
A ton of celebrities at the game, including hordes of footballers and Sir Paul McCartney.
Kevin Garnett received the biggest cheers/reception from the London crowd.
Stern also seems to have experienced the problems British basketball suffers from: “The infrastructure in countries other than the UK (the the NBA has played in) historically has been a little more focused with the support of a governmental body together with the federation, together with the league, and that hasn’t quite been the case with the UK.” Standard.
The Nets-Hawks encounter is the 12th NBA game in London, dating back to 1993, but only the fourth regular-season game (via the NBA).
Former NBA stars John Amaechi, Dominique Wilkins, Steve Smith and Dikembe Mutombo were the designated legends on the night.
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