Already 11 games under .500 and trailing by 15 at halftime in Oklahoma City on Jan. 2, it looked like the Nets were on the verge of utter disaster.
But a strange thing happened in the visiting locker room inside Chesapeake Energy Arena. The Nets looked around, listened to Jason Kidd’s game plan — stop Kevin Durant, and you will win the game — and went out and executed it.
The comeback victory that night has sparked the Nets into a second straight January surge, one that continued with a comfortable 101-90 victory over the Magic in front of 15,482 inside Barclays Center in snow-bound Brooklyn Tuesday night, the eighth victory in nine games for the Nets in 2014.
“That’s the first time I felt everyone in the locker room believed that, ‘You know what? You’re right.’ ” Jason Terry said Tuesday of that Oklahoma City game.
“I just think from that game on, it was a new year for us.”
Andray Blatche led the Nets (18-22) with 18 points and five rebounds off the bench, including a huge dunk over Queens native Kyle O’Quinn followed by a corner 3-pointer during back-to-back possessions in the fourth quarter that turned Barclays Center into one long party for the game’s final minutes, with the Nets cruising to yet another easy win and continuing their stunning transformation in recent weeks.
It seems the Nets as a group have clicked all at once, and it’s led to a sudden surge up the Eastern Conference standings. Three weeks ago the Nets were 11 games under .500 and sitting far outside of a potential playoff spot, now they are comfortably in seventh place in the East, and just two games behind the Atlantic Division-leading Raptors for fourth in the conference.
“The biggest thing about this turnaround is we never got down on one another,” Pierce said. “We’ve never had the finger pointing, we’ve never put the blame on anybody but ourselves. We kept coming to work, kept staying professional because we still believed we’d turn this thing around.
“The thing is, when you believe and you continue to get through the tough patches, it shows how things can kind of turnaround, and that’s what you see right now.”
The Nets have certainly looked like a new team, doing so many things they seemingly couldn’t do before the calendar turned to January. Brooklyn has corrected their defensively and third quarter struggles that plagued them the first two months of the season.
The Nets also continued to play excellent defense, particularly in the third quarter when they limited the Magic to going 3-for-21 from the field while outscoring Orlando 27-14 to put the game away for good.
“That was where we set our tone,” Shaun Livingston said. “That’s what we’ve been trying to hang our hat on. We’re trying to build our identity on the defensive end of the floor.”
But, more than anything, it just feels like everything is different around the Nets. The offense, rather than falling into a series of guys going 1-on-1 and hoisting jumpers, looks crisp because of the fluid ball movement, as exhibited again Tuesday by 29 assists on 40 made field goals. The defense — particularly after the switch to the smaller lineup and moving Kevin Garnett to center, Paul Pierce to power forward and Joe Johnson to small forward — is exhibiting more quickness around the perimeter and a stiffer test for teams to score all over the court against the Nets.
There also seems to be a belief around this group that didn’t exist through the season’s first two months that they can and should be winning consistently — something that didn’t seem to be the case very often earlier this season.
The players all gave at least some credit for the turnaround to Kidd, the rookie coach who seems to have weathered the early storm this season presented, and now seems to be pushing all the right buttons.
“I think [Kidd’s] done a great job of making adjustments,” said Deron Williams, who scored nine points and added nine assists in 28 minutes off the bench. “I think you see him putting his footprint on the game a bit more, especially lately, and he’s done a great job. He’s learning on the job — we knew that coming in — and I think he’s doing a great job, and especially now.
“I think since [assistant coach Lawrence Frank] has left … he was leaning on him a lot. And I think now he can coach the way he wants to and do things the way he wants to. I think that’s what you’ve seen.”
What a difference a winning streak can make.