Nets rout Bulls in Collins’ home debut

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Jason Collins started walking from the bench to the scorer’s table, fans rising out of their seats all around Barclays Center.

He committed a foul five seconds after entering. His only shot barely hit the rim.

Collins’ performance may not have been pretty, but everything else was great.

Collins played the final minutes of a winning home debut with the Brooklyn Nets, who cooled off the Chicago Bulls with a 96-80 victory Monday night.

“It was cool. It was a lot of fun to go into the game,” Collins said. “The most important thing was that we got the win. Chicago’s been playing really well as of late and for us to come out and really be — I think we played more physical than they did tonight.”

Finally playing at home more than a week after returning to the NBA as the league’s first openly gay player, Collins checked in to a standing ovation from a sellout crowd of 17,732 that included former NBA Commissioner David Stern with 2:41 remaining. He grabbed a rebound and had one of the Nets’ NBA season high-tying 19 steals in their third straight victory.

Deron Williams scored 20 points and Joe Johnson had 19 for the Nets (29-29), who got back to .500 for the first time since they were 2-2 after beating Utah on Nov. 5.

D.J. Augustin scored 16 points off the bench for the sloppy Bulls, who turned it over 28 times, leading to 30 Nets points, and had their four-game winning streak snapped.

A chant of “Jason Collins! Jason Collins!” broke out while Williams was shooting a free throw with the Nets leading 90-73 with 3:27 remaining. Fans finally got their wish less than a minute later — though not because coach Jason Kidd was listening to them.

“No, the game was out of hand, so I wanted to get those guys some rest,” he said. “D-Will was shooting free throws. Couldn’t put Twin in at that time, so I told him after the free throws that he would come in.”