The Nets did what they were supposed to Sunday night, dispatching a Kings team playing out the string and emerging from Barclays Center with a 104-89 victory.
Now comes the hard part. Beginning Monday night against the Atlantic Division leading Raptors in Brooklyn, the Nets will play their next four games against teams with winning records.
Of their 21 remaining games, only seven are against teams with winning records, therefore the next eight days — when the Nets face the Toronto at home, travel to Miami and Washington and then return to Brooklyn to play Phoenix Nov. 17 — will be their most difficult stretch of the remaining regular season.
The Nets (31-30) ensured they went into it on a high note, though, bouncing back from Friday’s disappointing loss in Boston with their fifth win in their last six games and seventh straight home win by jumping out to an early 17-4 lead and never looking back against the Kings (22-41).
It’s quite possible the Nets will have to go through at least some of the tough upcoming slate of games without their two biggest offseason acquisitions, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. Pierce, who has been dealing with a sore right shoulder recently that caused him to briefly leave both the win against the Grizzlies Wednesday and the loss in Boston Friday, lasted just 73 seconds against the Kings. He grabbed his shoulder after guarding
Sacramento’s Jason Thompson in the post, immediately checking himself out of the game and going to the locker room for the rest of the night with what the Nets called a sore right shoulder.
“It’s just a little stinger,” Pierce said after Friday’s loss. “Like [Wednesday] night, it’s been a problem for me the last few years. It’s weak right now. Whenever I get hit in that shoulder, I guess the constant years of banging, especially now that I’m playing [power forward] now. It’s just a stinger.”
Garnett missed his fifth consecutive game with back spasms as the Nets continued to maintain it isn’t a significant long-term issue. However, they also haven’t put a definitive timetable on his return.
“I think [Garnett’s] working extremely hard right now,” Nets coach Jason Kidd said before the game. “It’s about April and May for us, but also being able to have other guys step up, which Mason [Plumlee], [Andray Blatche] and [Jason] Collins have done. We need everybody on board.
“For us, I think we’re really taking strides, but for [Garnett] it’s about him being ready to go here in the next couple days, and we’ll see.”
The team’s depth could be further tested by the loss of Andrei Kirilenko, Pierce’s logical replacement at power forward in their small-ball alignment. Kirilenko left the game in the third quarter with a sprained right ankle and didn’t return.
The Nets managed to take care of the Kings Sunday without them, though, as Brooklyn got a balanced effort from across the roster that saw the Nets jump out to an early lead and never give it back.
The Kings made things interesting in the third quarter, tying the game at 57 on a Rudy Gay jumper, but the Nets went on a quick 8-2 run to re-take the lead before Marcus Thornton, whom the Nets acquired from the Kings in a trade for Reggie Evans and Jason Terry at the deadline, scored 13 straight points for the Nets, including their first 10 of the fourth, to put the game away.