TORONTO — When Mirza Teletovic hit a baseline pull-up jumper to put the Nets up by eight over the Raptors with 3:11 to go in the third quarter, it looked as if the Nets would have a good chance of remaining undefeated in 2014.
But things fell apart from there. Toronto (18-17) went on a 22-1 run and held the Nets without a field goal for the next nine minutes, as the Raptors turned an eight-point deficit into a 13-point lead they never relinquished on their way to a 96-80 win over the Nets in front of a sellout crowd of 19,800 inside Air Canada Centre.
The Nets clearly looked like a team that wore down in the second half after the combination of playing five games in seven days — including beating the Heat in double-overtime in Brooklyn Friday night — while facing a Raptors team that hadn’t played since Wednesday.
“That’s the easy way out,” Shaun Livingston said of the fatigue factor after going 3-for-11 to finish with eight points, four rebounds and three assists after playing sensationally in more than 50 minutes of action in Friday. “We played a lot of minutes [this week]. It was a tough stretch, tough turnaround.
“But we fought. It was a winnable game. It’s always disappointing for me, as a competitor. Each game counts. I think that’s a game that I would like to have back, but we did fight, and we did leave a lot out there on the court.”
The loss snapped a season-high five-game winning streak for the Nets (15-22), as well as dropping Brooklyn to four games behind the Atlantic Division leading Raptors and a half-game ahead of the Knicks and Bobcats in eighth place in the Eastern Conference.
The Nets were playing without Kevin Garnett, who sat out his fifth game of the season as a rest day after playing 36 minutes — including all of both overtimes — in the thrilling win over the Heat. With rookie Mason Plumlee making his first career start in Garnett’s place — and finishing with six points and five rebounds in 28 minutes before fouling out — that left the Nets without three-fifths of their initial projected starting lineup, with Brook Lopez out for the season with a fractured fifth metatarsal in his right foot and Deron Williams still sitting out after undergoing cortisone shots and platelet-rich-plasma treatment on both of his troublesome ankles Tuesday.
Still, it looked as if they were going to be able to find a way to extend their winning streak to six games when, after falling behind 40-27 late in the second quarter, the Nets closed the quarter on a 15-7 run then opened the third with an 18-3 surge to take a 60-50 lead on a Livingston pull-up jumper with 5:54 remaining in the third quarter.
From there, though, it was all Toronto, as the Raptors ended the quarter on an 18-4 run — with nine of those points coming from DeMar DeRozan, who finished with a game-high 26 — then opened the fourth with a 10-1 run that was capped by a Patrick Patterson layup that gave the Raptors a 78-65 lead with 7:23 remaining and ensured the hometown fans would go home happy on “Drake Night,” with the rapper — a Toronto native and team global ambassador — sitting courtside.
“I think in the last six minutes of the third, it was tough on us,” said Paul Pierce, who finished with a team-high 15 points to go with four rebounds, two assists and two steals. “We weren’t able to execute, we turned the ball over. … We were up 10 points and had a chance to really do some damage.”
Instead, the Nets were handed up their first loss in 2014. But given where this team was just over a week ago, when they were heading into a matchup against the Thunder in Oklahoma City on Jan. 2 at 10-21 and with their season potentially ready to go off the rails, there remained a decidedly optimistic tone around the locker room even after the loss.
“We’re going to start a new [winning] streak in London,” Mirza Teletovic said. “It’s as simple that.”