The Brooklyn Nets defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers 118-107 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Friday to secure their third straight win.

This victory enabled the Nets to replace the Cavaliers in the seventh place in the Eastern Conference. The two are likely to meet in the play-in tournament first again at the same arena and the winner will make the playoffs as the seventh-seeded team.

Kyrie Irving's shooting slump continued on Friday night as he missed 15 of 22 field goal (FG) attempts, including six from downtown. Though he had 18 points, six rebounds, eight assists and two steals, Irving was outperformed by All-Star rookie Darius Garland who scored 31 points with a 50-percent FG rate.

Bruce Brown became the most surprising contributor for the Nets, both offensively and defensively. Not only did he grab 10 rebounds, including four on the offensive glass, and delivered four blocks, Brown also scored 18 points and 8 assists. His energy plus the size of Andre Drummond caused a lot trouble for the opponents under the rim.

However, the Nets still needed Kevin Durant to play their offensive spine, if they had to win the game. He shot 6-for-7, all in jumpers, in the first quarter to score 16 points and two assists, forcing the Cavaliers to stop at nothing to trap him in the second and third quarters. The Net led 34-19 in the first quarter when Durant could attack freely, but saw the Cavaliers wipe that deficit and lead by five (88-83) after the second and third quarters.

In the Nets' 35-19 rally in the last quarter, Durant created the turning point by making two 3-pointers. He played over 40 minutes in Friday's game, the fifth time in the past seven games. In the other two games against two tanking teams, the Detroit Pistons and Houston Rockets, the 33-year-old who had suffered career-ending Achilles tendon injury, also played 39 and 37 minutes respectively.

"Game of runs. We made ours early, they hit us in the mouth and I like how we responded," Durant said after the game. "So that's just been the nature of our season. Just getting knocked down and seeing how we respond and I thought tonight was a good example of how we can respond."

The Cavaliers spent almost half of the regular season remaining in the top four of the East, but now they have to compete for the playoff qualification via the play-in tournament. That says how important their All-Star center Jarrett Allen is to the franchise. He suffered a fractured left middle finger in the game against the Toronto Raptors on March 6 and has not played since then. The Cavaliers were 6-17 after that.

The good news for the Cavaliers was that Allen appeared in practice ahead of the Game against the Nets and he seemed to fine drilling the ball. The bad news was, he is unlikely to return 100 percent healthy, because the fracture was at the base of the finger.

Suns overcome 17-point deficit to beat Jazz

In another game, the Phoenix Suns beat the Utah Jazz 111-105 at Vivint Arena in Salt Lake City on Friday to pocket their 64th win of the season.

The Jazz still led by 17 points (92-75) before the last quarter but then shot 3-for-20 from the floor to get only 13 points in the fourth quarter. Their best player Donovan Mitchell missed all of his six FG attempts and didn't even take one shot under the hoop. Rudy Gobert earned six free throws and made five of them in this quarter, but he was fed only one shot and he missed it.

The Suns exploited the opponents' slump well. Chris Paul scored six points and delivered five assists in the fourth quarter. Four of those assists happened in the last two minutes during which the Suns had a 11-3 run.

"We read the game. They try to take this away? Boom, we hit this guy," Paul said. "They took Book away and (Ayton) is open. They helped off of Mikal (Bridges) and we hit him. We weren't surprised."

"We knew we had to take it up a notch," Devin Booker said. "We were aware that they've given up some big leads this year."

Booker was rubbing salt into the Jazz's wound. Like we reported earlier, the Jazz have wasted 20+points leads four times this season. They still have the best-rated offense (116.7) of the league and are the second-most-productive team at the 3-point line (14.6 made per game) where they took 40.4 shots per game.

However, once shots behind the arc stopped falling into the net, the Jazz had no "Plan B." Gobert is a great finisher but he had to receive the ball close enough to the rim. Unfortunately he doesn't have a top orchestrator as teammate. Mitchell played savior in the playoffs in the previous two seasons, but he hasn't shown much this season that he could do it for the third time in a row.

Other games on Friday (away teams come first):

Milwaukee Bucks 131-101 Detroit Pistons

New York Knicks 114-92 Washington Wizards

Houston Rockets 115-117 Toronto Raptors

Atlanta Hawks 109-113 Miami Heat

Charlotte Hornets 133-117 Chicago Bulls

Portland Trail Blazers 78-128 Dallas Mavericks

Oklahoma City Thunder 101-120 Los Angeles Lakers