Mikal Bridges 15 straight points, 45 overall give Brooklyn win over Heat, 116-105

The Miami Heat paid a visit to the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center Wednesday night. It was the first meeting between the two squads since Kevin Durant’s MCL Sprain in South Beach, which turned out to be the last of his Nets tenure.While Mikal Bridges isn’t going to make Nets fans forget KD, he created his own memories Wednesday by scoring a career high 45, taking over a close game in the fourth and making it his alone.

Final score: Brooklyn Nets 126, Miami 105, the Nets first win since Durant and Kyrie Irving were traded and all the new Nets were cleared to play.

The game served as an especially important matchup for Brooklyn and Miami, who entered the evening as the fifth and sixth seeds in the East, respectively, with only a game and a half of difference in the standings.The Nets started off hot in the first quarter, led by their most newsworthy acquisition from last week’s trade deadline, Mikal Bridges. The versatile two-way forward showed out with 12 points in the first period on 5-of-6 shooting while also swatting two shots. Bridges often played an off-ball role in Phoenix to complement the ball-handling wizardry of Chris Paul and Devin Booker, but has been featured as more of a self-creator as a Net. He did so in his first stint on the floor with multiple self-created mid-range jump shots.

“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 on his career-high showing postgame. “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.”

After struggling against the New York Knicks on Monday, newly-appointed backup center Ben Simmons checked in early against Miami, replacing Nic Claxton to play the final eight minutes of the first quarter. He had two strong rolls to the basket after stepping onto the floor — laying the ball in on a feed from Bridges and then finding Mikal in the corner for three — but still struggled with illegal screens and general passiveness. Despite it all, the Nets were in front by a point, 26-25, after a deep side-step three from Spencer Dinwiddie in the closing seconds.