A 12-Game Winning Streak Lifted The Brooklyn Nets Into The NBA Elite

The Nets were already showing signs of life in early December when they took their 12th loss in a 11-point defeat at home to the Boston Celtics.

It was the kind of game you never felt like the Nets were winning and just chalked it up to the Celtics being a better team at the time.

At that point, the Nets went from allowing 153 points in their ninth loss to 15 games to going on a respectable run of seven wins in 11 games to demonstrate there was a pulse after the rough start highlighted by Steve Nash’s firing and Kyrie Irving’s eight-game suspension imposed by the team.

After the Nets fell to the Celtics, they were 6 1/2 games back of the top spot in the East and thoroughly in the morass of the play-in contenders where they were last year when an 11-game losing streak dropped them from the top of the conference to a middling 44-win team that was often was about who was unavailable for different reasons.

And following the frustrating showing against the Celtics, the Nets kept winning until Wednesday when they finally could not complete a comeback in Chicago. The Nets were due to lose at some point since nobody was going to 57 games in a row, but what they achieved in between losses significantly changed the narrative of things.

While the Nets earned eight wins over losing teams, they also got an 18-point win over Milwaukee and an eight-point win against Cleveland, the league’s top scoring defense. The Nets not only won those games but they scored 118 and 125 against two of their colleagues in the top four of the East.

There were a number of impressive things during the second-longest winning streak in franchise history. Besides the standout individual numbers of Durant and Irving, the shooting was downright electric as the Nets shot a league-best 55.9 percent, a number that was 3.6 ahead of the Denver Nuggets.

Other standout numbers included a league-best 124.1 points per game, a league-best 44.2 percent from 3-point range, 27.8 assists per game (the most in the East), including their 42-assists in a 143-point showing against Golden State on Dec. 21. The Nets were even second in the league in blocks (6.1) during the span of Dec. 7 to Jan. 3.

Breaking down the shooting numbers even further, the Nets led the league by making 51.2 percent on shots with four seconds or fewer on the shot clock while also shooting 56.3 percent in their 12 fourth quarters. The also made 45.6 percent on catch and shoot shots, 52.8 percent on pullup shots and 64.7 percent on shots in the paint with all three figures being the best in the league during that span.

It was the kind of streak that made the league notice and finally showed what was anticipated on June 30, 2019 when the Nets signed Durant and Irving. It also was the kind of streak that made you wonder why Jacque Vaughn did not just stay on as the head coach instead of Nash getting the job in Sept. 2020 shortly after the Nets were swept out of the bubble by the Toronto Raptors.

“We understand how we want to play every night,” Durant said. “I feel like the league is always on notice with the talent we have on our team. I don’t think anybody takes us for granted when they’re preparing for us each night. But I think for us we found some things that were good for us on both ends of the floor and want to just be consistent with executing those things as we move forward.”

Moving forward means continuing to win consistently, especially as the schedule toughens with Friday’s visit to New Orleans, a home rematch for the TNT audience next Thursday against Boston along with a five-game trip later this month with stops in Phoenix, Utah, Golden State and Philadelphia.

What the Nets achieved in the past month also coincides with some positive developments by the Knicks. The day before the Nets lost to Boston, the Knicks were blown off their homecourt with a disaster of a second half against Dallas and since then they are 11-5 in the form of an eight-game winning streak, a five-game skid and a three-game winning streak.

Those recent developments create the potential of New York basketball becoming a dud like last spring when the Knicks won 37 game and the Nets were unceremoniously swept by the Celtics in the opening round that ended the season by April 25.