NEW YORK — Two-time NBA championship-winning head coach Erik Spoelstra still believes the Nets have enough time to build the chemistry needed to win a championship this season. And in the first half of Kevin Durant’s return to the rotation after a month-and-a-half nursing a sprained MCL, you could see why.
The ball whipped around the floor to the tune of 19 first-half assists, Durant looked unstoppable with 17 early points and the Nets — without Kyrie Irving (ineligible to play in New York City), Ben Simmons (back tightness) and Joe Harris (season-ending ankle surgery) — made early work of a Miami Heat team short three of their best players in Jimmy Butler, Kyle Lowry and gritty two-way wing P.J. Tucker.
But the Heat are the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed for a number of reasons, and here are two of them: chemistry and continuity. Where they lacked talent, they compensated with a level of cohesion that wasn’t enough for the Nets to overcome at the Barclays Center, spoiling Durant’s long-awaited return with a 113-107 come-from-behind victory.
It was a game the Nets needed to have, and they fumbled a 16-point second-quarter lead on their way further down the standings.
“This is a game we should win,” said interim coach Jacque Vaughn, who will return to the bench when Steve Nash clears the health and safety protocols on Saturday. “We told our guys that after the game. We should feel disappointed. We should have won this game.”
Which is why it’s hard to believe the Nets will have enough time to put this group project together in time for the playoffs. And it’s why the Heat remain a nightmare playoff matchup for the Nets, who would draw No. 1 Miami in the first round as the eighth seed if the postseason began today.
Thursday marked the 36th different starting lineup the Nets have used this season. Sunday will mark the 37th, when Irving and Durant start alongside newly acquired big man Andre Drummond for the first time this season.
The Nets have relied on Durant’s greatness all season long, and for good reason: He is a two-time NBA Finals MVP, a perennial contender for league Most Valuable Player and is coming off a summer where the entire world touted him as the best basketball player on the planet after he led Team USA to a gold medal.
Can he save these Nets, who spiraled from first to eighth and lost 16 of their 21 games without him?
“I don’t look at myself as that, as a savior,” Durant said at shootaround Thursday morning. “But I know what I can do and how much I can help this team and what we’re missing as a group, but I’m not trying to go out there and win a game by myself tonight or make it all about me. I just try to go out there and help and be a good teammate and do what I do. I know what I bring to the table and try to do it to the best of my abilities.”
Durant finished with 31 points on 10-of-21 shooting in his first game back since the Jan. 15 MCL sprain. He made seven of his first 11 shots in the first half, but went cold in the third quarter, missing five shots, opening a road for the Heat to go on a run.
As Durant went, so did the Nets. Miami outscored Brooklyn 28-17 in the third period, erasing a double-digits first-half deficit. Bruce Brown added 21 points and Patty Mills scored 14 off the bench on 4-of-5 shooting from downtown, but without Irving, it wasn’t enough.
Which, again, is concerning, given the Heat played on Thursday without three of their best players and their wild-card scorer and playmaker, Victor Oladipo.
Spoelstra thinks the Nets still have enough time to put it together, but his team’s shorthanded victory over the early-season championship favorites says otherwise.
“They have a bunch of savvy veteran players,” the Heat coach said ahead of tipoff on Thursday. “They’ll have enough time to get on the same page. If it were a younger team, then maybe it’d be a little bit different.”
