Mikel Brown Jr. vows to learn from costly mistakes that spoiled his breakout Nets performance

With Mikel Brown Jr.and Egor Dëmin leading a pack of seven first-round draft picks the past two years, the Nets were always going to suffer growing pains. There was plenty of pain and suffering in Tuesday night’s heartbreaker in Boston. And the Nets hope for plenty of growth down the line. Brown, the No.

6 overall pick, had what should have been a breakout moment in a thrilling victory in Boston.He poured in 13 points in a fourth-quarter Nets comeback, including a clutch 3-pointer with three-tenths of a second left to force overtime. But it was in that dramatic extra stanza that Brown made a pair of typical rookie mistakes, mental gaffes on each end of the floor that will be galling today but growth opportunities for tomorrow. “[Jordi Fernández] obviously acknowledged, ‘This wasn’t just on you.

It’s a team effort.’ But I set standards for myself when it comes to that stuff,” the 20-year-old Brown said.“As a guard, time management, blowing coverages on the defensive end, that I just can’t have.

I’m gonna go watch that film with the coaches, go watch film with Jordi, break it down, learn from it and be better.” Much of the film won’t be fun.But it may end up being fruitful. It will show Brown’s 17 points, five assists and five boards in his best game yet. But it will show the time-management mistake, when Brown missed a pair of late layup attempts in overtime, the second of which was ill-advised. He should’ve pulled the ball out and bled the clock.

But he drove and missed with 2.3 seconds left in overtime to give Boston one last chance. “It was discussed to just try to get it in, and try to kill time.That definitely was discussed,” Brown acknowledged.

“But like I said, man, it’s just mistakes down the stretch that I just can’t make.I just can’t do that, so …” It proved a costly mistake. Though Dëmin pointed out it was not purely a rookie one, citing De’Aaron Fox’s similar NBA Finals Game 4 call to go...