Noah Clowney wasn't just waiting for his breakout performance. He has been working towards one.
The Nets' young bigs finally got it on Monday, earning a win against New Orleans.
Clowney scored 15 points and was 5 of 10 from deep.
At 20 years and 120 days old, he became the youngest Nets player to make five 3-pointers in a single game.
Despite Clowney's quiet start to the season, the trip didn't surprise anyone in the Nets' locker room.
“No, because I watch him shoot every day and I know he's a good shooter,” coach Jordi Fernandez said. “What makes me angry with players is when they stop shooting. And Noah, one of the things he's done consistently is just keep flying. That's how it works. And you can't control whether the ball goes in or not. You can control it if you hit good shots. He kept hitting good shots after good shots. That's what we want to see. And I want him to keep making shots every time.”
That's a message he didn't need to convey to Clowney twice.
“Jordi has always had a great medium of pushing confidence when it comes to his shots,” Clowney said. “But in general, he has a great way of just having fun. He's a very outspoken guy, but he's also very good at giving confidence to his players. And finding that medium and having fun with it. It’s important to tell them to shoot. So shoot.”
Clowney is averaging a modest 6.7 points and 3.7 rebounds, but has totaled just 18 points since his last double-digit appearance on Oct. 27.
Clowney's strong performance last season raised expectations that he could challenge for the starting forward position.
That didn't happen, but Clowney stepped up when Dorian Finney-Smith suffered a scrape with a sprained ankle on Monday.
“We expected him to have a great shooting game from behind the arc because he's been practicing, but at the end of the day, he's young and you have to accept that,” Cam Thomas said. “So everyone's proud of him for stepping up and playing as a reserve five and really changing the game to suit the other team's scheme, because they have to protect him there. Because he has to, and you can't just load him up and make him shoot. He's the center of attention right now in games like this.
“I hope he hits it at a high level. So he's got to keep doing it. But I'm very proud of him, that was a big game.”
Clowney suffered a DNP in Friday's game against Boston, but had his best game of the season in Wednesday's rematch with seven boards and one block.
“His winning defensive play, his verticality, the way he protects the rim for us, his ability to switch. He's engaged. He's competing at a high level,” Fernandez said. “I'm not surprised. Maybe it's someone on the outside, but I see it every day.”
Finney Smith is questionable for the game against Boston, but Bojan Bogdanovic, Dayron Sharpe and Trendon Watford are out.
The Celtics played against Atlanta on Tuesday without Kristaps Porzingis (left posterior tibial tendon), but Jayson Tatum played due to an ankle sprain.
