


DETROIT — No blown leads. No blown calls.
Just a blowout of Detroit — one that put the Nets on the brink of the playoffs.
A night after missed calls robbed the Nets of potential game-tying free throws in a loss to Minnesota, they didn’t leave anything to chance in this one.
The Nets ground out a hard-earned 123-108 win over the Pistons at Little Caesars Arena.
“Tell our guys, you’re going to have to choose your hard,” Jacque Vaughn had said beforehand. “You can say it’s hard to play back-to-back, if that’s what you choosing to acknowledge as being hard. There’s some other things that I’d acknowledge as being hard in this world to do on a daily basis.
“We have an opportunity to play the game of basketball, to rectify the loss of [Tuesday] and collectively get a win. So we are going to choose our hard?”
It was harder than it could’ve — or maybe should’ve — been.
But it shaved the Nets’ magic number to clinch a playoff berth down to one.
They can clinch the sixth and final guaranteed spot in the Eastern Conference if seventh-place Miami loses Thursday at Philadelphia, which is holding the No. 3 seed.
With two regular-season games left, the Nets (44-36) matched their victory total from last season and lead the Heat by a game and the head-to-head tiebreaker after doing what they were supposed to in Detroit — beat a bad team.
The Nets shot 52.3 percent from the floor, including 60.0 in the first half as they raced out to a 17-point lead at intermission.
They had 22 assists (against just four turnovers) on 27 baskets, and never looked back.
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Spencer Dinwiddie — who the NBA Last Two Minute Report showed was fouled on a 3-point attempt with 9.5 seconds left in Tuesday’s loss to Minnesota that wasn’t called — sliced the Piston’s defense up with a career-high 16 assists and just two turnovers as Brooklyn put six in double-figures.
Mikal Bridges had a team-high 26 points, and Joe Harris added all of his 18 points in the first quarter when he hit six of eight from deep to spot Brooklyn an early lead.
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It was key in not letting Tuesday’s heartbreaker beat them twice.
“I mentioned that to the team: Hold on to [Tuesday’s] loss as long as you want to, but once midnight comes around, then we’re going to totally change the page and think about Detroit. That’s what our conversation was, about Detroit and getting a win,” Vaughn said. “Hopefully, they’ve gotten the message of not looking ahead.”
The Nets trailed early, by as much as 25-18 after James Wiseman found Jalen Duran for a dunk.
Then he followed with a hook shot to make it 27-21 with 5:28 left in the first quarter.
But the Nets reeled off 11 unanswered points to take a lead they would never surrender.
Bridges’ free throw made it 32-27, and they built the lead from there.
The Nets led 47-34 after the fourth-highest scoring quarter in team history, led by Dinwiddie’s 10 assists and Harris’ deep shooting.
That cushion swelled to 74-57 at the break, their biggest halftime lead on the road this season.
It was still 89-76 with 2:58 left in the third quarter when R.J. Hampton (game-high 27 points) single-handedly dragged Detroit (16-64) back into it.
Hampton scored every point for the Pistons in an 11-2 two-minute blitz, even ripping down a couple of rebounds for good measure.
He sandwiched 3-pointers off Killian Hayes feeds around an Ed Sumner layup.
After sinking a pair of free throws, Hampton rattled home a running 3-pointer.
His deep 30-footer capped the run and cut the lead to 91-87 with 59.8 seconds left in the third.
But that’s as close as the Pistons would get.
Dinwiddie found Cam Johnson — who briefly had to leave the game with a knee injury — for a drought-busting 3-pointer.
That made it 94-87 and the Nets largely held Detroit at arm’s length the rest of the evening.