Mikal Bridges puts up 45 in Nets win over Heat to head into all-star break

BROOKLYN — The new-look Nets got their first win of the post-Kevin Durant era and Brooklyn gets to head into the NBA All-Star break with a win. The Nets picked up a gritty 116-105 win over the Miami Heat on Wednesday night at Barclays Center as Mikal Bridges hit a new career high in points with 45 and Cam Thomas added 19.

Bridges recorded the third 30-plus point game of his career and his second as a member of the Nets. He also had tallied 20-plus points in eight of his last nine games, including two of his three games as a Net.

“My teammates kept finding me. They felt I had it going and just kept getting me the ball and set screens and let me operate and coach just drawing stuff up too,” Bridges said about his 45-point night. “They gave me the confidence to go out there and just be aggressive, but man, I want to do all that and win, too. I just feel like if you do all that and lose, it’s kind of like an empty stat to me. I’m just happy we got the W and everybody played well.”

The win was the Nets’ second in their last six games and it prevented them from going into the break on a three-game skid. Thursday marked the third game that Brooklyn had all four of its trade deadline acquisitions on the floor together, while head coach Jacque Vaughn continued to experiment with his lineup.

The Nets have had a much different look since they dealt Durant and Kyrie Irving last week and scoring has been much more spread out. Bridges and Thomas had big nights, but Brooklyn had every player except Seth Curry score at least a basket.

“Yeah that’s how we want to play,” Nic Claxton said. “I think we can play even faster just a lot of miscellaneous actions that will be tough for teams to guard. And I think you’ll see different guys stepping up every single night. It might not be the same dose of the same player.”

Cam Johnson finished the night with 18 points on 6-of-14 shooting, while Spencer Dinwiddie shot 3-of-4 for nine points. Joe Harris had nine off the bench, but struggled from three-point range hitting just two of his six shot attempts.

Claxton had a team-high nine blocks and two blocks.

It was down the stretch in the third quarter that the Nets finally erased a small six-point deficit and swung the game in their favor. A Thomas three with 6:01 tied the game at 67 and then he tied the game again moments later with a stepback three.

Harris gave the Nets a brief lead before the Heat tied the game right back up. Bridges scored six of Brooklyn’s next 10 points as they ended the third up 83-80.

Bridges scored 17 of his 45 points in the final 12 minutes of the game as the Nets pulled away from the Heat. The Nets’ forward ended the night shooting 17-of-24 with eight rebounds and five assists.

It was in the middle two quarters that Thomas did the most damage, putting 11 points in 10 minutes in the second and an additional six in the third.

Vaughn rolled with a 10-man rotation against the Heat with Simmons serving as the sixth man followed by Seth Curry and Royce O’Neale off the bench. It was until the second quarter that Thomas finally checked into the game.

“Yeah, I we really dictated things in the second half,” Nets coach Jacque Vaughn said. “We didn’t allow them to get to their spots, more deflections in the second half, turn them over more in the second half. So that was to our advantage. And then we got out and hopefully, the strength of this team is we could continue to run third and fourth quarters.

“We were able to do that get some easy buckets just because we do have the depth to get out and run make or miss.”