Lowly Cavaliers suffer their 17th straight loss
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Brook Lopez had a hard time remembering his last game-winning shot.
"I don't know, it might have been Stanford - but it feels good," the New Jersey Nets center said. "We ran the play exactly the way we wanted to."
Lopez scored the tiebreaking basket on a turnaround jumper from 6 feet out with 1.4 seconds remaining and the Nets beat Cleveland 103-101 on Monday night, handing the Cavaliers their 17th straight defeat.
Lopez led the Nets with 28 points and Anthony Morrow scored 16 off the bench. Cleveland's losing streak is its longest since dropping 19 in a row to close the 1981-82 season.
The Cavaliers have lost 21 straight road games, matching the team record set from Jan 13 to April 14, 2003. Their last road win came in New Jersey on Nov 9.
"It's tough to take the loss because I thought our guys played hard enough to get the win," Cleveland coach Byron Scott said. "We have to keep playing hard and applying all the things we talked about at both ends of the floor. We have to know it's going to work out for us, we're going to have a breakout game. Right now we're losing some of these battles but in the long run we'll hopefully win the war."
The final basket by Lopez capped a back-and-forth battle down the stretch between two last-place teams.
The Nets have won three of four since owner Mikhail Prokhorov ended trade talks to acquire Carmelo Anthony from Denver.
Devin Harris had 14 points and 10 assists for New Jersey while Jordan Farmar and Kris Humphries each scored 11. Humphries led the Nets with 11 rebounds.
Antawn Jamison scored 26 points to pace the Cavaliers. Daniel Gibson had 19 and Ramon Sessions added 16. Cleveland also got 14 points from Joey Graham and 12 from J.J. Hickson.
The Nets appeared to have the game in hand when Morrow made a jumper with 2:06 left to give New Jersey a 97-93 lead.
Cleveland fought to the finish.
Gibson hit a 3-pointer to cut the lead to one and Sessions put Cleveland in front 98-97 with a driving dunk with 1:08 left.
A dunk by Humphries put New Jersey back in front and a running bank shot by Morrow gave the Nets a 101-98 lead with 13.2 seconds left.
Graham, taking a pass from Sessions, tied it with a 3 from the left corner with 7.1 seconds left.
That set the stage for Lopez to nail the winner.
"We fought hard all game long to get to that position and Brook did a great job getting us a bucket," Harris said. "Anthony did a great job of getting us a key bucket late."
Cleveland jumped out to a 12-point lead in the second quarter and held the Nets at bay until the final period.
"Our energy level wasn't that great in the first half at all," Lopez said. "We came out strong in the second half, tapered off a little bit, but we came up strong when we needed to."
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