ORLANDO, Fla. — The Nets head into Friday’s game against the Magic as one of the hottest teams in basketball. It’s the first time in six years they’ve been .500 this deep into the season, something even coach Kenny Atkinson had to acknowledge was a big deal.
It might be an even bigger deal that — after getting a little taste of the playoff race — the fast-rising Nets (23-23) want more. Much more.
“Yeah, I’ll say this: I’ll admit it, that’s real progress,” said Atkinson, cautious of having his players lose sight of today by looking forward to tomorrow. “I’ve really tried to back off, don’t want to get ahead [of ourselves] or have a parade or anything. But that’s real big-time progress.
“And the group deserves it. With the injuries we’ve had, guys stepping up, through that losing streak how they stayed together, it’s a heck of an accomplishment. But these guys want more. When the confidence grows like that on the team, you feel it. You feel the momentum and you felt it on the bench during [Wednesday’s] game, and you feel it in the locker room, our rise in confidence. It’s great to see.”
The aforementioned injuries included those to Caris LeVert, Allen Crabbe, Jared Dudley, Dzanan Musa and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson — with Hollis-Jefferson just returning Wednesday and the others still out.
The losing streak was an eight-game skid that bottomed out with a Dec. 6 players-only film session.
And the game Wednesday? Just a 145-142 overtime escape in Houston that even had new co-owner Joe Tsai celebrating on social media. The Nets rallied from 13 points down with four minutes left in regulation, and seven down with 1 ½ minutes left in OT for their 15th win in 20 games since that film session.
“[It’s] great. It just shows how hard we’ve been working,” Treveon Graham said. “There was a stretch where we kind of couldn’t finish games, and this stretch we’ve been on we got better and better as a team and we’ll just go from here.”
This stretch started with a 106-105 OT win over then-league leading Toronto. Gutting that game out down the stretch buoyed the Nets’ confidence and showed them they could actually pull out a nail-biter.
Brooklyn played the second-most clutch games (five points or less in the final five minutes) in the league last season, and made a habit of losing them. And the Nets went into that Toronto tilt a league-worst 4-12 in clutch games this year, with three more clutch losses than the next-closest team.
But starting with that transformative Toronto win, they’re 9-2 in clutch games, tied with the Nuggets, currently in second place in the West, for the best such mark in the league.
Now the Nets have pulled into a tie with Miami for the sixth seed in the East and are .500 through 46 games for the first time since 2012-13.
“I won’t say that was one of our goals; that’s more of an arbitrary marker,” Spencer Dinwiddie said. “But it is something that, with the way our seasons have gone in the past, to be considered that caliber of team and be in the playoff race, and beat one of the best teams in the league and arguably the best player in the league when he basically gave us 60 points, that’s a testament to our group.”
So was getting back-to-back wins against Boston and at Houston. Now Friday’s contest starts a four-game span (the Magic twice, the Kings and the Knicks) in which their foes came into Thursday an aggregate 71-104. If this team wants more, the next week is a golden opportunity to go get it.
Two-way player Alan Williams, back in the fold, had 19 points and 10 boards in Long Island’s G-League win Wednesday. But the most auspicious stat was the 6-foot-8, 261-pounder going 3-of-7 from 3-point range. Afterward, he channeled his inner Darwin by tweeting, “Adapt or die.”