NEW YORK -- Maybe Jason Kidd's young Milwaukee Bucks team enjoyed a bit of coming of age -- albeit against the franchise that he once played for and briefly coached.

Guard Jerryd Bayless paced a balanced scoring attack with 26 points, and center Greg Monroe added 23 points and 13 rebounds, leading the Bucks to a 103-96 victory over the Brooklyn Nets on Monday night at the Barclays Center.

It was the first win of the season after three losses for the Bucks, who played without four injured key players. The Nets fell to 0-4.

"We were on the road with a young team," said Kidd, perhaps the best player to play for the Nets in the NBA. His retired No. 5 hangs from the rafters at the Barclays Center, and he coached the Nets for one season in 2013-14. "It still might be early in the season, but they could have let go of the rope and gave in, but they didn't. It was a very good win."

The Bucks had only nine players available to play, with Bayless logging nearly 47 minutes of action.

"I told him before the game that there was a good chance he could play a lot," Kidd said of Bayless, who made eight of 15 shots from the floor, including six of 10 from long range. "He knew we were short-handed and he had to play a lot. I thought he was great. He didn't hesitate. He knew we needed someone to step up."

Milwaukee forward Giannis Antetokounmpo added 21 points and eight rebounds. Forward Khris Middleton had 17 points, including a clutch jumper with 1:13 remaining in the fourth quarter, giving the Bucks the lead for good.

Bucks guard Michael Carter-Williams made a steal, then added one free throw with 31 seconds left to push the lead to 99-96. Monroe then snared a rebound of a miss by Nets guard Jarrett Jack, and Bayless canned two free throws with 19.6 seconds left to ice the victory.

"It was really big for us to get our first win," said Carter-Williams, who twisted an ankle on one of the game's final plays but insisted he was fine. "A lot of guys stepped up to bring us some positive energy. Jerryd was great tonight. He basically took over for us."

"We had guys getting on the floor, going after loose balls," Kidd said. "These are the guys who are getting better with every game. They understand the process. It's going to take some time, but I feel good about this team."

Center Brook Lopez paced six Nets in double figures, scoring 18 points.

"I thought we played hard down the stretch," Lopez said. "We were making plays there for a while. It's very tough. The ball moved very well. We sustained that for the majority of the game, but they hit some big shots down the stretch. I still think we played very good team basketball."

Jack scored 15 points, forward Joe Johnson and guard Bojan Bogdanovic had 14 each, forward Thaddeus Young contributed 13, and guard Shane Larkin finished with 10.

After a 33-33 first quarter, the Bucks turned up the heat in the second quarter as the Nets went ice cold from the floor, connecting on just six of 23 shots in the second period. Milwaukee led 59-48 at the half.

Johnson hit a nice fallaway jumper to cap a 9-2 run, bringing the Nets back to within 61-57 with 8:21 left in the third.

Center Andrea Bargnani completed a three-point play with 1.5 seconds left in the third quarter that drew the Nets even at 80-80, erasing Milwaukee's 11-point lead in the process.

The Nets grabbed their lone lead of the second half, 94-92, on two free throws from Bogdanovic with 3:24 remaining, but the Nets managed just two points the rest of the way.

NEW YORK: Former President Bill Clinton was in attendance, sitting in the front row. ... Milwaukee was without G O.J. Mayo, G Tyler Ennis, F John Henson and second-year F Jabari Parker, the former Duke All-American who missed most of last season after ACL surgery. Parker is supposed to make his season debut Wednesday night against Philadelphia. ... The Nets entered the game connecting on just 21 percent from 3-point range, which is ranked 30th in the league. ... Herb Turetzky kept score for the 2,000th game for the Nets on Monday night. Turetzky, in his 49th season as the official scorer, has been keeping score for the franchise since the ABA days at the Commack Ice Palace. Turetzky has kept score for a 1,314 consecutive games, a span of 31 complete seasons. ... The Nets and Bucks played twice last season at the Barclays Center, with both games going to triple overtime, the only time in NBA history that two teams played to three overtimes in the same season.