Deron Williams had 20 points and nine assists to lift the Brooklyn Nets over the Orlando Magic 97-77.
Brook Lopez added 16 points and chipped in five rebounds for the Nets, while Joe Johnson contributed with 13 points and five assists. Keith Bogans finished with 12 points as the Nets won their eighth consecutive home game.
Brooklyn also matched the franchise record of 11 wins in January and they can break it if they beat the Miami Heat Wednesday.
"We feel pretty good here at home. We're pretty confident, we understand that we have three tough games coming up," the Associated Press quoted Johnson as saying. "We want to take it one game at a time, prepare hard for Miami and come out with the same focus and intensity that we had tonight and we're going to try to dictate the pace of the game."
For the Magic, Nikola Vucevic was the top scorer with 18 points and nine rebounds. Maurice Harkless added 16 points and Glen Davis finished with 15 points and five rebounds, but could not snap Orlando's six-game losing streak.
"It's tough to continue to do the same task over and over again, and that's what we're asking of our guys. That's what we have to do in order for us to be good as a basketball team," coach Jacque Vaughn said.
"We have to box out every single time, not nine out of 10 times. For the most part we've done that. We will continue to work at it."
The Nets got off to a good start behind Williams' three 3-pointers, outscoring Orlando 30-20 in the first quarter. They again outscored the Magic 26-20 to extend their lead to 16 points at halftime.
In the third quarter, the Magic managed to cut a 16-point deficit to seven as they outscored the Nets 23-14. The Nets, however, went on a 9-0 run at the beginning of the fourth quarter behind Bogans to push the lead to 16 points yet again.
Eventually Brooklyn outshined Orlando 27-14 in the final quarter to win the game by a big 20-point margin.
"You can blame a lot of things on why the run ended, but we had guys out there fighting, playing together and trying to win," Nelson said. "We made a good push but obviously it was not good enough."
The Nets out-rebounded Orlando 45-36 in the game. The Magic did not shoot well as they made only 32 out of 79 attempts from the field, whereas the Nets shot 37-of-74.
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