NBA

Winning streak ends but Nets look forward to breather abroad

The Nets may have seen their season-high, five-game winning streak come to an end in Toronto on Saturday night, but it only slightly dampened the new-found optimism surrounding the team ahead of its flight to London this week to face the Hawks on Thursday.

“I think it’s encouraging,” Shaun Livingston said Saturday of the way the Nets have played over the last week and a half. “You’ve got to start up a new streak [in London].

“Start up a new winning streak, see what’s got us here, take a look at it tonight, see what we could have improved on, and just don’t relax. That’s the main thing. Don’t relax. We won five games, but we still haven’t done anything. We have to keep going.”

The Nets may still sit seven games below .500 and four games out of the Atlantic Division lead after Saturday’s loss to the Raptors, but this team has looked decidedly different since its unexpected win in Oklahoma City on Jan. 2. Since then, the Nets have picked up wins over the Warriors and Heat, have surged back into playoff contention in the dreadful Eastern Conference and have begun to look something like the team they were expected to be.

Now they’ll get a chance to catch their breath after completing a stretch of five games in seven days and seven games in 11 days. And although Deron Williams will remain in New York to continue to rest and rehab his troublesome ankles after receiving cortisone shots and platelet-rich-plasma treatment on Tuesday, it’ll also give the group a chance to recover after a busy first couple months of the season.

“I think it’s good for us right now,” Paul Pierce said. “We’ve had a lot of games in consecutive nights, we’re dealing with injuries that need time to heal, give guys more time to rest, so I think it’s a positive.

“We’ll get a chance to get away, be with each other for a week, get to know each other again and just kind of build our camaraderie.”

It also will be a chance for the Nets to catch their collective breath and enjoy themselves for a couple days in a unique situation, a rare opportunity during the nonstop grind of an 82-game, six-month long regular season.

This season has been particularly grueling for the Nets, who have gone through significant injuries to Williams, Brook Lopez and Andrei Kirilenko, have had several other players in and out of the lineup and have also dealt with tumult within the coaching staff.

But a timely winning streak has helped turn things around, and the Nets left for London Sunday night knowing they’ll be able to enjoy themselves while there.

“It’s going to be a little of both,” Pierce said when asked how to balance business and pleasure on the trip. “You don’t go out of the country and not enjoy it. We know we’ve got a game and stuff, but we’re going to enjoy each other’s time, see the sights.

“You’ve got to understand, you don’t get these opportunities. Because of the NBA, you get to travel abroad and see things. You’ve got to enjoy it. We’re going to have our fun, but we know we have to go to work, and that we have a game to play.”