The Center Ran Point

The best passer in Atlanta on Saturday night was not a guard. It was Brooklyn's center. Day'Ron Sharpe started at the five for the Nets and spent the night dealing — 13 assists, a career high, the most ever handed out by a center in franchise history, wrapped inside the first triple-double of his career. Brooklyn lost anyway, 124-121, in the kind of finish that is starting to define its season.

Sharpe finished with 12 points, 10 rebounds and 13 assists in 32 minutes, and the shape of it was there early: eight of those assists came in the first half, matching the career high he had set just three nights earlier, before he went on to break a record that belonged to the man he replaced in the starting lineup.

Line the two starting centers up and the night tilts. Atlanta's Onyeka Okongwu was taken to the locker room in the first minute after catching Julius Randle's elbow in the throat, according to Reuters, then came back and posted 16 points with four blocks — a real night's work. Sharpe beat him in the column nobody circles for a center: assists, 13 to 5. Sharpe out-assisted Atlanta's entire starting backcourt by himself — Dyson Daniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker combined for eight — and his 13 were nearly half of Brooklyn's 29. The next Net on the list was Randle, with eight.

It was not a gimmick. Brooklyn's backcourt is held together with tape right now: Egor Demin, who started the first four games of the season, missed his fifth straight game with a bone bruise in his right leg, the Associated Press reported, and rookie Nolan Traore started in his place. Across the floor, Dyson Daniels spent the night wrecking possessions the other way — 10 rebounds and six steals — and it did not matter. The ball kept finding Sharpe, and Sharpe kept finding the open man. So the offense bent toward the big man at the top of the floor — handoffs, short rolls, kick-outs — and Sharpe read it like a guard. Michael Porter Jr. scored 25, Traore 19, Randle 19 with eight assists of his own, and most of Brooklyn's easy baskets started in Sharpe's hands.

The franchise mark he took down was Nic Claxton's — 12 assists at Boston on November 21, 2025. Claxton is also the center Sharpe replaced in Brooklyn's starting five this season. NetsDaily's milestone watch added the rest of it: this was the first triple-double by a Nets center, and the franchise's first triple-double of any kind in nearly a year.

Previously's stat desk found this one the unglamorous way — by scanning career game logs. Across the first 262 games of Sharpe's career, he had never recorded more than eight assists in a single game. The 25-year-old, a first-round pick in 2021, took the starting job from Claxton only this season. On Wednesday, in the win over Charlotte, he set that career high at eight. Three nights later, he pushed it to 13. His full line from Atlanta, and the game itself, live in the Game Center, and his season page is on his Previously player page.

And still, the ending. Brooklyn led 31-14 early, by as many as 17, and 114-110 with 1:45 to play — the official count says the Nets led for 96 percent of the night, Atlanta for 3. Then it went the way these keep going: a Sharpe turnover became an Okongwu three, Alexander-Walker's free throws with 1:26 left gave Atlanta its first lead of the entire night, and Jalen Johnson — back from a sprained ankle, 30 points deep with 12 of them in the fourth — capped a 10-0 run with an and-one at 38 seconds. Aaron Wiggins scored 12 of his 20 in the fourth for Atlanta; Brooklyn rookie Mikel Brown Jr. scored 13 of his 18 in the fourth and slowed the comeback without stopping it. Danny Wolf's three in the final second cut it to two before Okongwu's free throw closed the book.

The rest of the loss is in the margins. Brooklyn's 22 turnovers became 28 Atlanta points, and the Hawks lived at the rim — 70 points in the paint and 20 in transition, against four fast-break points for the Nets. Brooklyn won the glass 53-40, and all five of its starters finished in plus territory. Every reserve finished negative or even. The starting five, with Sharpe at the controls, won its minutes. The game flipped in the others.

Atlanta has won four straight and sits at 7-4. Brooklyn is 2-7, back on the floor tonight in Dallas, and its losses keep rhyming — control the game, donate the last two minutes. Sharpe's night does not fix the closing problem. It retires a different one: for the first time this season, Brooklyn's offense has a second engine, and he plays center.