The NBA is and always was a star-driven league, and in their recent losing skid opposing stars were driving the Nets crazy.

But figuring out ways to take away opposing top scorers is the biggest reason for their current resurgence.

“Yeah, you know going into the game that No. 1 dude, he knows how to score. He’s done it before probably and he can probably continue to do it again,” Nets coach Jacque Vaughn said. “I take a little bit of a football aspect: You’re not going to be able to stop the run and the pass. So sometimes we go into a night and Trae Young is not going to get off, or Lauri Markkanen is not going to get off.

“We’re hoping that we can use the other guys on the floor, that if a secondary guy has a good game then we have to live with some of the consequences. Over the course of the game there’s some dudes who are built to make shots; some aren’t. In the fourth quarter also, shots might look a little differently. Role players, their shots look a little different. Those dudes who bring it every night, they can bring it every night; so we want to get that ball out of their hands.”

That’s exactly what the Nets have done to win four of their last five coming into Tuesday’s tilt with Minnesota and Anthony Edwards.

From Markkanen and Young to Miami’s Jimmy Butler, Houston’s Jalen Green and Orlando’s Paolo Banchero, they’ve averaged a combined 23.3 points this season.

But the Nets have held every single one of them under both their season averages for scoring and shooting percentages.

The Nets quieted that aforementioned quintet to just 15.2 points on .361 shooting in their last five games.

“Just reading the scout [report], knowing guys’ tendencies and all five guys buying in,” Nic Claxton said. “It’s not just on whoever’s guarding that star player just determining what that star player is trying to get to.”

While the secondary scorers have picked up some of the scoring, they haven’t replaced the lost efficiency.

There is an inherent benefit into taking away what teams want to do and forcing them to settle for what you give them.

“Well, we’re hoping so,” Vaughn said. “It tries to make those other guys make plays that they aren’t used to making. And then you ask, ‘Can they make those plays over and over again?’ Maybe one-off they can, but are they built to do that thing over and over again, from the first quarter to the fourth quarter?”

The Nets learned that tough lesson in a recent five-game skid that saw them torn up by opposing stars. Donovan Mitchell closed it with consecutive 31-point games, and before that was a dominant triple-double by MVP Nikola Jokic.

It saw the Nets fall into the play-in.

But they rebounded by slowing down Butler to pull out a huge win in Miami.

They smothered Trae Young — who’d torched them for 34 and a game-winning buzzer-beater in their previous meeting — to just 10 points on 3 of 12 shooting.

And Markkanen was the latest example in Sunday’s win, with Dorian Finney-Smith and Mikal Bridges holding him scoreless until about 7:21 left in the half.

The Nets forced Talen Horton-Tucker to carry the burden, and it worked.

“Ideally we want to try to get the ball out of the hands of guys who are designed to make plays,” Spencer Dinwiddie said. “Usually you want to do a good job on first and second option. … You want [Kelly] Olynyk, [Juan] Toscanno-Anderson, Kris Dunn, [Simone] Fontecchio, you want them beating you.”

Next up is Edwards, averaging 24.5 points and coming off a 37-point outing against Portland.

“We’ve just got to be better defensively on both one and two options because a lot of teams, both their one and two are really good, even that three as well,” Bridges said. “So we’ve just got to be better.”