Lionel Hollins' defensive switch helps Nets hold off Magic

Brook Lopez's massive hands turned into huge pompons and his mouth was transformed into a megaphone for the entire fourth quarter.

All the 7-footer could do was wave, clap and cheer on his Nets teammates during the final 12 minutes of Sunday's game. Coach Lionel Hollins was fed up with Lopez's defense again, not at all pleased with how easily Magic center Nikola Vucevic (27 points) was torching him inside, just as Minnesota's Nikola Pekovic had four days earlier. Hollins figured he'd be better off switching to a smaller lineup.

"He wasn't guarding him," he said after the Nets' 104-96 win at Barclays Center. "I want him to guard him. Simple as that. Get on him. You know he's shooting the ball, he's making shots. You've got to guard him."

With Lopez firmly attached to the bench, the Nets dug in defensively and kept Vucevic at bay. They didn't let him get off a single shot and held him scoreless in the fourth quarter as Hollins' key adjustment saved the Nets from a potentially embarrassing defeat.

"I'm trying to do what he wants, you know?" said Lopez, who suggested it wasn't tough to sit out the fourth quarter because the team won and that lineup was effective. "I felt I was out there and I just wasn't into him enough. That's the bottom line."

If not for Hollins' quick thinking and some steady fourth-quarter play from Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Bojan Bogdanovic (career-high 22 points), Alan Anderson and Kevin Garnett, the Nets (4-2) might have succumbed to an Orlando team that now has a 6-52 road record since March 2012. No wonder Johnson still was visibly ticked nearly 30 minutes after the final buzzer.

"We make it hard on ourselves," said Johnson, whose bucket with 1:08 left gave the Nets a 102-92 lead and sealed their third win in their last four games. "We get to a point to where we get a bit complacent, the ball stops moving, guys get a little selfish and it makes it hard because now it hurt us defensively. Shouldn't even come down to the last three, four minutes of a game to where it's a tight game, Coach has to make a decision to put me at the 'four.' It should've never got to that."

After Vucevic scored 17 of Orlando's 25 points in the third quarter, Hollins dived into his bag of coaching tricks and put Garnett at center. Orlando then struggled from the floor in the fourth quarter, shooting 6-for-16.

Hollins' adjustment slowed down the Magic's pick-and-roll and its dribble penetration at times, decreasing Orlando's chances of kicking the ball to open three-point shooters.

Energized on defense, the Nets outworked the Magic (2-5) in second-chance attempts in the fourth quarter and got the better of Orlando in the paint, too -- with Lopez planted on the bench.

"Listen, man, this is a team now, and the onus is not on one or two guys here," Garnett said. "If we have a lineup and Coach is running with that lineup, everybody understands what it is. There's nights where the big fella is going to finish games. The majority of the time, that's what it is. Tonight, we needed to finish the game off defensively and get stops, and we did. It had nothing to do with individual guys."