NBA

Nets blow 22-point lead to Timberwolves

BROOKLYN BAWL: Joe Johnson questions a call — as Minnesota guard J.J. Barea pleads his case — during the Nets’ collapse in the fourth quarter last night at Barclays Center, where a 71-49 lead eventually turned into a 107-96 defeat.

The Timberwolves came to Brooklyn last night without their two best players, having lost by 19 in Toronto the night before.

In short, they were a team the Nets — who want to prove they now are among the elite in the Eastern Conference — should beat easily. And for much of the game, that’s how it looked like it would end up.

But after the Nets led by 22 early in the third quarter, Minnesota outscored the Nets by an incredible 58-25 the rest of the way — including 32-10 in the fourth quarter — and handed the Nets a stunning 107-96 loss in front of 14,017 inside Barclays Center.

“We’ve just got to get a little more gritty, a little tougher,” said Joe Johnson, who finished with 19 points. “I just think there’s no way they should outwork us. No team should outwork us.

“You can outwork somebody night in and night out, just with effort. But in that fourth quarter, we just didn’t bring it.”

It was an amazing turn of events for the Nets, who looked like they were well on their way to an easy victory when Deron Williams hit a 3-pointer to make the score 71-49 with 9:36 left in the third.

But Minnesota, playing without injured stars Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio and on the second night of a back-to-back against a fresh team, dominated from that point forward. It seemed like the Timberwolves got to every loose ball as they outrebounded the Nets 19-4 in the fourth quarter.

Couple that with a scoring drought, and the Nets quickly found themselves on the wrong end of a stunning result.

“It was tough,” said Brook Lopez, who finished with 13 points and eight rebounds. “We have to make contact on offensive rebounds and just try to make their catches more difficult in the post.”

Making the result even more incredible from the Nets’ perspective was the way their offense completely deserted them in the fourth quarter. The Nets put on a shooting clinic through the first three quarters, hitting 55 percent of their shots from the field and 65 percent (13-for-20) from behind the 3-point arc.

But, like everything else, that changed in the fourth quarter, with the Nets going 4-for-19 and 0-for-3 from 3-point range, including their All-Star backcourt of Deron Williams and Johnson going a combined 2-for-10.

“It’s a game where were up 20,” said Williams, who finished with 18 points and 13 assists. “We should be able to put teams away and keep them at distance, not give up a 20-point lead.

“It’s definitely disappointing [and] definitely embarrassing, given who they’re missing. They executed well, we didn’t, they got stops and rebounds, and we didn’t. … They deserved it more than us.”

And, in the end, it was an opportunity lost for a Nets team to build on the momentum from Saturday’s historic and winning Brooklyn debut and begin to prove they belong among the East’s elite.

“I just think, for our team, losses like this have to really sting more than they ever have in the past, because losses like this can come back to bite you later in the year,” Nets coach Avery Johnson said. “We can’t afford to lose at home.”