NBA: Hawks hold off Nets despite Durant's 55; Warriors into play-offs

NEW YORK (AFP) - Trae Young scored 11 of his 36 points in the final two minutes on Saturday (April 2) as the Atlanta Hawks withstood a career-high 55 points from Kevin Durant in a 122-115 National Basketball Association (NBA) victory over the Brooklyn Nets.

The Hawks grabbed their fifth straight win to move into eighth place in the Eastern Conference with a 41-37 record, a game ahead of the Nets and the Charlotte Hornets, who were trounced 144-114 by the Philadelphia 76ers earlier in the day.

All three are jockeying for position in the play-in tournament, in which the teams are in seventh to 10th in each conference will battle for the final two berths in the play-offs proper.

The Nets' second straight defeat ended the star-studded Brooklyn team's hopes of escaping the play-in and earning one of the top six seeds that will advance directly to the play-offs.

Kyrie Irving scored 31 points, but with Goran Dragic sidelined by Covid-19 concerns, Bruce Brown out with flu and Seth Curry a late scratch with a left-ankle injury, no other Nets player managed to score in double figures.

"We didn't really play a good ball game," Nets coach Steve Nash said.

"I can't sugarcoat it. We didn't play a great game and not enough guys played well."

Durant did all he could, but even after his 19 third-quarter points the Nets went into the final period trailing by seven.

His eight three-pointers, on 10 attempts, were also a career high and he surpassed his previous career high of 54 points, set when he was with Oklahoma City in 2014.

Atlanta, meanwhile, had four players score in double figures. In addition to Young, who added 10 rebounds, De'Andre Hunter and Danilo Gallinari scored 15 points apiece and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot added 11 for the home side.

Elsewhere in the East, the Miami Heat tightened their hold on first place with a 127-109 victory over the Chicago Bulls. Jimmy Butler scored 22 points and Kyle Lowry added 19 for the Heat, who have followed a four-game skid with a three-game winning streak.

In the West, the Golden State Warriors clinched their first NBA play-off berth since 2019 with a dramatic 111-107 come-from-behind victory over the Utah Jazz.

Trailing by as many as 21 points in the first quarter and by 16 early in the fourth quarter, the Warriors outscored the Jazz 24-4 over the final eight minutes.

Klay Thompson drained four three-pointers in an 18-0 run that put the Warriors ahead for good culminating in Jordan Poole's three-pointer with 3:33 remaining that gave them a 105-103 lead.

Thompson finished with 36 points and Poole added 31 for the Warriors, who reached the NBA Finals in five straight seasons up to 2019, winning three titles, before missing out on the play-offs in 2020 and 2021.