NEW ORLEANS — The Nets desperately needed a bounce-back win.
What Brooklyn got was a bounce-back beating, pounding the pitiful Pelicans 145-111 at Smoothie King Center on Wednesday night.
In a matchup of slumping teams coming off humbling losses, the Nets were the ones who showed some steel.
The Nets (3-8) had their highest-scoring half in years, led by 41 and welcomed Egor Dëmin back to the starting lineup with a resounding rout.
The Nets had been thrashed by 37 in their prior game Sunday in Dallas. And on the other side, New Orleans (4-7) was coming off the worst regular-season defeat in franchise history, a 51-point loss to Golden State on Monday.
Even though New Orleans forward Zion Williamson came back with a game-high 29 points after sitting out that Warriors rout, the Nets still had a rare laugher.
Despite being without point guards Nolan Traore and Mikel Brown Jr., the return of Dëmin and some improved floor spacing saw the Nets carve up New Orleans.
In his first game back since suffering a bone bruise Oct, 27, Dëmin scored 12 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter. He shot 5-for-8 overall and 4-for-6 from deep to finish a game-high plus-29.
Michael Porter Jr. also scored 22, while Julius Randle had 17 and was a plus-38 — tying Stephon Marbury for the best in franchise history for a road game.
The Nets, one of the league’s most turnover-prone teams, looked crisp and cohesive on the offensive end. They handed out 30 assists to a solid 15 giveaways, and dominated the boards 42-28.
Six Nets mustered at least 15 points — Dëmin, Porter Jr., Randle, Day’Ron Sharpe and backups Moritz Wagner and Noah Clowney — to tie a franchise record.
That kind of balance was key after their bench had struggled for much of the season.
The Nets came out of the blocks quickly, with Danny Wolf — who had another double-double — giving them a 12-5 lead.
Porter Jr.’s 3-pointer off a Sharpe feed doubled up the Pelicans at 20-10 with 5:36 left in the first quarter. And by the end of that 39-25 opening period — which saw the Nets shoot 61.5 percent and 4-for-10 from deep — they had their second-highest scoring first quarter of the past two years. It got better in the second.
For much of the early part of this season, the Nets bench has struggled. Wednesday night, the substitutes didn’t just hold their own but were additive. And that’s even without their pair of 20-year-old point guards.
Wagner had seven points in the first quarter and 13 by the break.
He had a shockingly ferocious dunk on Jordan Poole for an and-one that put the Nets up 31-19 and followed with a nice drive and a flex afterward.
Pelicans coach Jamahl Mosley — who’d coached Wagner in Orlando before getting fired in May — got a technical for barking something at his former player.
No matter.
The Nets took an 83-66 cushion into intermission when Randle found Terance Mann for a buzzer-beating 3-pointer. It was their highest-scoring half since Dec. 21, 2022 (when they had 91 against Golden State).
It became an outright laugher in the second half.
A putback dunk by Clowney — in need of a bounce-back himself, after his meltdown the prior game in Dallas — padded it to 104-77 with 3:36 left in the third. It sent Mosley scurrying for a timeout, but the Nets had this one in hand.
And unlike in Atlanta to start this trip — when they blew a 17-point and fell to the Hawks — this time the Nets actually built on the lead, padding it to 41.
