NEW YORK _ It's been a very long time since the Nets have been in this situation: scoreboard watching, meaningful games in March, and the thrill of knowing that every play could potentially bring them one step closer to the playoffs.
They as much as anyone know it's a privileged position. And they as much as anyone know that if they keep going the way they're going, it could soon disappear.
In sixth place with now 18 games left in the season, the Nets on Friday looked like a team trying to break ground without a shovel. The result: an often messy, ultimately futile endeavor against a Hornets team that came into the game struggling, but left with a new life. Instead of bouncing back after a 19-point loss to the Wizards, the Nets tacked a "to be continued" on that game, losing to the Hornets, 123-112. The Hornets broke a three-game losing streak, leaped back into eighth place, and won the season series over the Nets.
Kemba Walker led the Hornets with 25 points and seven assists.
D'Angelo Russell had 22 points and nine assists to lead the Nets.
The loss negated a frenzied effort at the end of the third quarter and into the fourth, when the Nets whittled a 21-point deficit to nine with 8:49 left.
What's more, the Nets faded when they should have been at their strongest.
The team was whole for the first time since the first game of the 2017-18 season: The return of Spencer Dinwiddie (15 points and four assists in 23 minutes off the bench), coming back from thumb surgery, meant Kenny Atkinson had his full roster at his disposal. That hasn't been the case since Jeremy Lin's injury back in the dark ages of October 2017.
"You feel it," the high stakes, Atkinson said before the game. "I'll be honest with you, you feel it. But I don't make a big deal of it with our guys. I try to stick with kind of our principles and what we do, stick with us improving and really we want to improve from last game and fix those things that happened."
Maybe, but for one night at least, the Nets were at times overmatched by their new reality. Instead of a playoff-caliber game in front of a robust crowd of 15,578, for the better part of three quarters, they performed like the Nets of old, taking small leads in the first quarter before disassembling in the second, and all but disappearing defensively.
The Hornets' 15-3 run opened up a 54-44 lead with 5:10 left in the first half, and the Hornets led by 18 at the break. The Nets turned the ball over 11 times in that quarter for 15 points, and allowed Walker to dominate them in the paint, scoring 10 points in that frame. The Nets also had two shot-clock violations in that quarter.
If there was a bright spot then, it was that Dinwiddie, slotted in with about four minutes left in the first quarter, didn't seem to suffer too much from his long hiatus, dating to Jan. 23. DeMarre Carroll, too, provided as much of a spark as he could muster, scoring 11 of his 20 points off the bench in the first quarter.
The Nets went down 21 in the third but eventually drew to within 98-86 to end that quarter, helped along by a 7-0 run to end the frame, and got to within 10 in the opening seconds of the fourth on Rodions Kurucs' dunk. Russell hit all three of his free throws with 8:49 left to cut the Hornets lead to 104-95.
The Nets appeared to get something going on Joe Harris' rebound with eight minutes left, but Rondae Hollis-Jefferson's offensive foul stemmed the momentum, and Nicolas Batum hit a 3 from the top of the key to make it 107-95.
