Nets’ Noah Clowney finally breaks out after quiet start to season

Noah Clowney hadn’t just been waiting for a breakout performance. He’d been working toward one.

The Nets young big finally got it on Monday, shooting them to a win at New Orleans.

Clowney had 15 points and hit 5 of 10 from deep.

At 20 years and 120 days old, he’s the youngest Net to ever hit five 3-pointers in a game.

Despite the quiet start to the season for Clowney, the outing didn’t surprise anybody in the Nets locker room.

“No, because I see him shoot every day, and I know he’s a good shooter,” coach Jordi Fernandez said. “When I get mad at the guys is when they stop shooting. And Noah, one thing he’s done consistently is just continue to let it fly and it’s how it works, like you do not control if it’s gonna go in. You can control if you take a good shot. He kept taking a good shot after good shot after good shot. Like 5-for-10, it’s what we want to see. And I want him to keep shooting every time.”

It’s a message he hasn’t had to tell Clowney twice.

“Jordi has a great medium of, as far as shots go, always pushing confidence,” Clowney said. “But then in general, he has a great medium of just having fun. He’s been very straightforward, but he also is very good at giving his players confidence. And finding that medium is important, and telling us to shoot it. So shoot it.”

Clowney is averaging a modest 6.7 points and 3.7 rebounds, and had totaled just 18 points since his last double-digit outing back on Oct. 27.

A hot finish to last season had raised hopes that Clowney could challenge for a starting forward spot.

That didn’t happen, but when Dorian Finney-Smith was scratched Monday with an ankle sprain, Clowney stepped up.

“He was due for a great shooting game from behind the arc, because he’s been working. But at the end of the day, he’s got to embrace it, because he’s young,” Cam Thomas said. “So everybody’s proud of him stepping up, playing the backup five, really changing the game for the other team’s schemes, because they’ve got to guard him out there, and you can’t just load up and let him shoot, because with a game like this now he’s on everybody’s radar.

“Hope he just knocks it down at a high level. So he’s got to keep it up. But very proud of him, that was a big-time game.”

Clowney had taken a DNP in Friday’s loss at Boston, but comes into Wednesday’s rematch off his best game of the season with seven boards and a block.

“His winning plays on defense, his verticality, the way he protects the rim for us, switchability. He’s engaged. He competes at a high level,” Fernandez said. “I’m not surprised. Maybe somebody else on the outside is, but I see it every day.”

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Finney-Smith is questionable against Boston, while Bojan Bogdanovic, Day’Ron Sharpe and Trendon Watford are out.

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The Celtics played Tuesday against Atlanta, with Kristaps Porzingis (left posterior tibialis tendon) out, but with Jayson Tatum playing through an ankle sprain.