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It took Dennis Schroder less than one game to have the Brooklyn crowd chanting his name.
And about as long to have the Nets playing their best basketball.
Making his Nets debut Saturday, Schroder sparked a 123-103 rout of San Antonio before a sellout crowd of 18,005 at Barclays Center that cheered their newly acquired point guard late in the blowout.
“It’s great. I’m glad we got the win, it was the most important, but of course the appreciation is there. I love that the fans did it. Big-time for me,” Schroder said.
“The teammates, everybody in the locker room told me to just be myself and play basketball. Coaches said the same thing. I’m 11 years in. Just be aggressive, find my open teammates, push it in transition, play defense. They made it easy for me.”
And he made it look easy for the Nets for a change.
The Nets landed Schroder from Toronto for Spencer Dinwiddie at Thursday’s trade deadline.
Two days later, he came off the bench behind Ben Simmons and had 15 points and 12 assists.
“He’s a hooper. I’m not surprised. He knows how to play the game. He has a great feel for the game. Wants to help us guys get better and he did that,” Simmons said.
It was the third-highest assist total off the bench in team history, behind James Harden and Kevin Porter.
He checked in midway through the first and promptly helped the Nets pull away with eight points and four assists in the period.
“Great for our crowd to ease him into this, saying his name. It’s pretty cool,” coach Jacque Vaughn said. “He was able to show his ability to be a point guard on the floor. Whether that was getting plays from me on the fly, organizing and getting our group into good sets, and just the overall feel of understanding the flow of the game, what’s needed.
“You saw his ability to have a toughness about him, whether that was guarding [Victor Wembanyama] or guarding other perimeter guys.”
In his first visit to Brooklyn, Wembanyama came in leading all rookies with averages of 20.3 points and 10.1 rebounds. He scored 21, but the Nets held him to four boards.
After taking an elbow to the face from Wembanyama late in the game, Schroder showed he had a chin, holding up physically against the 7-foot-3 center.
It was the grit he showed there that had the crowd chanting his name.
“It definitely hurt. That’s the reason why I keep touching my chin,” Schroder said. “It’s just a great night for me, getting the W and the fans screaming my name. … Wemby’s a pretty tall dude and it definitely hurts. I gotta ice it.”
It’ll sting a little less after this.
The Nets smothered the Spurs into 39.6 percent shooting and 11 of 34 from deep. They turned abysmal entry passes into turnovers and fast breaks the other way.
Schroder took care of the rest, helping the Nets build a 28-point cushion.
Cam Thomas had 25 points, and Nic Claxton added 20 points and 11 rebounds.
Trailing 10-7, Brooklyn ripped off an 18-5 run, including the first nine unanswered and a Claxton driving dunk right through Wembanyama.
Schroder found Dennis Smith Jr. for a 3 that made it 16-10. Then he hit a 3 of his own to cap the run and put the Nets up 25-15.
They never looked back.
Clinging to a 72-65 edge in the third, the Nets blew it open with a 14-5 run.
Once again, Schroder was at the heart of it, his 3 making it 86-70.
The play of the game came with 0.4 seconds left in the quarter when Schroder threw an alley-oop to Claxton off an inbounds play that included a great Jalen Wilson screen.
That padded the cushion to 93-75.
“J-Wil came up, set a screen, slipped and knew we only had 0.4 seconds, so that’s a perfect time for a lob. I just went up. It was a great pass and I finished it,” said Claxton.
“I was definitely surprised that he caught it. I thought it was too far,” Schroder said. “But it was a hell of a play and he finished it off.”
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