SAN ANTONIO — If you want to know the difference between the Nets and Spurs these days, you don’t have to look farther than Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett.
Tuesday night’s game marked the 43rd time Duncan and Garnett have squared off. Though both players will be shoo-in first ballot Hall of Famers, Duncan looks like he has plenty of life left, while Garnett appears to be playing his final meaningful NBA minutes, a script that continued to play out Tuesday in a 113-92 Spurs win that handed the Nets (10-21) their sixth loss in their past seven games.
“I don’t really look at their battles. … I just think how sad it’s going to be if I’m still coaching here and Timmy’s not in the gym,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said with a smile before the game. “I’m going to be scared to death.”
Duncan, who came into the game averaging 14.2 points, 9.6 rebounds and 2.0 blocks as he approaches his 38th birthday, finished with 15 points (though two came on an accidental tip-in by Mason Plumlee) and five rebounds in 24 minutes, to lead the Spurs (25-7) to a comfortable win.
Garnett, on the other hand, continued his season-long disappearing act, finishing with just two points and three rebounds — while going 0-for-5 from the field — in 16 quiet minutes.
“He’s a veteran guy,” Kidd said of Garnett, who didn’t speak to the media after the game. “He understands his role. … He’s getting great looks. We feel that he’ll make those.”
Born less than a month after Duncan, Garnett looked like a player who is approaching the end, which is hard to believe given how well he played in the playoffs for Boston against the Knicks — when he averaged 12.7 points and 13.7 rebounds per game in the Celtics’ first-round exit after putting up 14.8 points and 7.8 rebounds per game during the regular season.
This season, Garnett’s shooting numbers have gone off a cliff. He heads into 2014 shooting 36.4 percent from the field — more than 13 percentage points lower than last season.
This season is far from what the Nets envisioned when they traded four first-round draft picks to acquire Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry in the blockbuster draft-night deal with the Celtics, a move that was supposed to make the Nets legitimate challengers to the Heats and Pacers in the East.
“This whole year is hard to fathom,” Deron Williams said.
Like Garnett, the Nets continued their season-long woes Tuesday night, getting run off the floor by the NBA’s most consistent franchise. The Spurs finished the game shooting 51.3 percent from the floor and 45 percent from 3-point range. They had their way with the Nets, who fell behind 14-4 to start the game and trailed by as many as 32 late in the third quarter, a period that saw San Antonio score 39 points.
“It’s embarrassing, man,” Pierce said. “You go out and you’re down 30 at the end of the third quarter, you give up 98 points in three quarters. It’s embarrassing.
“I don’t know if I’ve probably ever been a part of this many blowouts in one season already, but at some point, we’ve got to be able to have our pride come from each individual, and say we’ve had enough of this. It’s extremely embarrassing.”
To add insult to injury, the Nets left the court with 0.2 seconds remaining after the clock operator initially thought the game was over and sounded the final horn, forcing Kidd to eventually call a timeout to get enough players out onto the court to throw the ball in and mercifully end the game.
“They thought the game was over,” Kidd said. “There was no confusion. They thought the game was over, but unfortunately there was 0.2 seconds left.”
San Antonio had six players finish in double-figures, led by Tony Parker’s 18 points, while the Nets were led by rookie Mason Plumlee’s 15 points and career-high 13 rebounds in his first double-double.
The Nets’ final loss of 2013 was a perfect summation of the current state of the two franchises. On one side, the small-market, consistent Spurs got another metronome-like performance from their all-time great in a win. On the other, the expensive, broken-down Nets got another forgettable one from theirs in a loss.
So while the Spurs relentlessly march toward another playoff berth and high seed in the Western Conference, the Nets flail aimlessly at the bottom of the pathetic East, now 11 games under .500 and with few — if any — signs of hope on the horizon.
“We have no choice,” Williams said of turning things around. “I don’t think we’re making any trades. … I mean, I don’t know, but this is the team we’ve got. We feel like we can win with it. We just have to figure out how.”