Yuta Watanabe was feeling it, rattling off five straight second-quarter points and wanting the ball again. The Nets fed their sharpshooter, who penetrated to the left elbow and forced a pull-up that clanged off the rim.
But the way things are going for the Nets, misses become assists. Kyrie Irving had sliced into the lane. He leapt and corralled the rebound with a cocked right arm, throwing down a violent, one-handed dunk that announced this was less a game and more a celebration. San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich wanted a timeout, and the Nets wanted to party.
The Nets were surgical in a thorough, wire-to-wire dismantling of the Spurs, 139-103, on Monday at Barclays Center, where 18,224 reveled in the Nets’ NBA-best 12th straight win and their 16th in their past 17 games, punctuated by one mammoth put-back dunk.
“It felt like 2K honestly,” Ben Simmons said, referring to the video game. “I didn’t know he could do that.”
After the slam, Irving glared at a Nets bench that had erupted, grown men turned into boys who were spilling onto the court in disbelief.
“I’m like this close to getting tired [of] people downplaying my athleticism at times in that locker room. I’m like this close,” Irving said with a smile after scoring a game-high 27 points.
The Nets, who were 9-11 and 11th in the Eastern Conference on Nov. 25, have climbed to 25-12 and one game back of the first-place Celtics.
Jacque Vaughn’s team has won in a variety of ways through this season-changing spurt, learning to play together and learning to steal games that it may have lost at the onset of the season. But rarely have the Nets won with so much authority.
They were up 74-47 at the half, their second-highest output in a half this season (having scored 91 against Golden State on Dec. 21) and their second-largest lead in a half (again, those poor Warriors).
In a matchup that had potential “trap game” written all over it — a pit stop at home against the miserable Spurs following a three-game road trip and before another three-game trip — Vaughn’s team did not look past Popovich’s. The Nets, who never trailed for a second straight game, played as if they needed the game — which meant it was not a game for long.
“We can’t have trap games,” said Simmons, who dished all nine of his assists in the first half. “We know coming into a game like this, these guys are younger, they’re hungry. Everyone competes. So for us, we got to step it up.”
The Nets led by as many as 14 in the first quarter and ballooned the edge to 28 in the second. The Nets reached triple digits in the third quarter and ended the period up 31, allowing Irving and Kevin Durant to become fans for the entire fourth quarter.
Irving erupted for 15 of his points in the first, putting forth a performance that few in basketball history could match. He could knife into the lane and switch hands, finishing with his left. He could blow by seemingly any defender and finish with a floater. He could pull off step-back after step-back, knocking down four of his five tries from deep.
The Nets shot 11 of 21 from beyond the arc, including Seth Curry (16 points) going 4 of 7 from 3. The Nets played without Royce O’Neale, a late scratch with a non-COVID illness, so Curry stepped into the starting lineup and lit up San Antonio.
Durant poured in the quietest 25 points imaginable, as efficient as ever (10 for 14) but taking a backseat to Irving’s brilliance and the Nets’ marksmanship. Each of Durant’s three trips to the foul line was scored by “M-V-P!” chants from the fans, and it’s hard to argue they are wrong.
As a game in which the Nets shot 62.4 percent from the field wound down, Durant could literally take a seat, a key development for the overworked 34-year-old. He watched as fans under the basket became bleacher creatures, chanting the name of each player on the Nets bench and getting a wave in return.
With energy and a powerful slam, the Nets put on a show that ended with bows.
“We show up, we play,” Vaughn said of a team that is not playing down to its competition. “Whoever’s going to play, we hoop out.”
