As the Nets wind down their final season in New Jersey, there’s little left to play for.
With the absence of a playoff push to give the season’s final few games importance, including Wednesday night’s matchup in Newark against the Knicks, Nets coach Avery Johnson has to find other goals to give each game meaning.
“We’re trying to have small victories,” Johnson said after his team took its official team photo. “Right now, we’re up 2-1 [in the season series] against Philadelphia. That was a team that swept up last year. That’s a small victory.
“We didn’t beat the Knicks last year, [and] we beat them in the Garden. So then, if you can take it to the next level and win the [season] series, great.”
The first two meetings between the Nets and Knicks this season were dominated by point guards. The first saw the emergence of Jeremy Lin, who came off the bench to score 25 points against one of the league’s best point guards in Deron Williams and lead the Knicks to a win.
Then, just a couple of weeks later, Williams repaid the favor, hitting eight 3-pointers and scoring 38 points in a 100-92 victory for the Nets.
“I think, you know, early in the year, Lin kind of comes out and catches fire, and then you have all of this Linsanity stuff and everybody’s going crazy,” Johnson said. “Then, Deron comes and puts the kibosh on all of that in the Garden. … I can’t say it any better, any differently than that.”
But Wednesday night’s game, the final meeting between the two rivals before the Nets move across the Hudson to Brooklyn next season, will have a far different feel.
Lin is out for the rest of the regular season after undergoing knee surgery, and Williams is out for tonight’s game with a sore right calf, an injury he suffered in Saturday’s loss to the Celtics that forced him to sit out of Monday’s loss to the Heat.
And that doesn’t include the Knicks firing Mike D’Antoni and installing assistant Mike Woodson as interim head coach, or the Nets trading for Gerald Wallace, who also is likely to miss tonight’s game as he continues to recover from a strained left hamstring he suffered April 8 against the Cavaliers.
“Now, we’re at different stages,” Johnson said. “They are still fighting for a playoff spot, we’re not going to have Deron … Mike Woodson is coaching now, so there’s some different dynamics going.
“And this is the last time that we’re going to meet this year, in New Jersey, in this arena, and I know our players are going to be fired up.”
tbontemps@nypost.com