NEW YORK — Friday night was merely a formality.
With the Eastern Conference’s sixth and final guaranteed playoff seed hanging in the balance, and a date with a short-handed and low-ranked Orlando Magic team on the docket, the Nets dotted their I’s and crossed their T’s.
Then they signed, sealed and delivered the Magic a 104-81 defeat, a Brooklyn victory that punched the team’s ticket to Philadelphia for a first-round playoff date with Joel Embiid, James Harden and the 76ers next week.
Coincidentally, the Nets will play the 76ers in a playoff preview in Sunday’s season finale at Barclays Center.
The news was delivered at the 4:41 mark in the fourth quarter by the Barclays Center public announcer: The seventh-seeded Miami Heat, who rested six of their top players, lost their game to the Washington Wizards on Friday.
The only way the Nets could have risked falling into the play-in was with a loss and a Heat win.
Yet Brooklyn’s standing as the East’s sixth seed is cemented, even if they lose against the Sixers on Sunday. The Nets swept the season series, 4-0, against the Miami Heat this season. Even if they finish tied with the seventh-seeded Heat at the end of the season, the Nets will still advance to the playoffs, while the Heat must defend their standing in the play-in tournament.
And now the celebration may commence, though the bar has been lowered since the beginning of the season.
The Nets entered the year with legitimate championship aspirations built on the idea of a future revolving around superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. Those aspirations flew out the window the moment Irving blindsided the organization with a trade request two days ahead of the Feb. 9 deadline.
And when the dust settled, the Nets held firm to the belief they would remain a playoff-contending team.
That much is certain: The Nets have found cohesion on the defensive end of the ball and play a free-flowing style of offense that leads to tons of threes and drives to the rim. They won exactly the number of games needed to secure a trip to the playoffs.
And of course, it didn’t happen without drama.
The Nets only took a four-point lead over the lottery-bound Magic into the second quarter and trailed by four in the game’s opening moments. They blew the lid off with a 31-16 second quarter and never looked back.
But that object in the rearview mirror is always closer than it appears.
The Nets’ lead ballooned as large as 24 in the third quarter before the Magic began chipping away at the deficit. With about seven minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Nets found themselves up by just 10.
Four Nets players scored in double figures, led by Mikal Bridges, who tallied 22 points. Seth Curry came off the bench and scored 13 points in 15 minutes, including two four-point plays when he was fouled on a made 3-point attempt. And Spencer Dinwiddie dished 13 assists to go with six points and seven rebounds.
Cam Johnson effectively put the nail in the coffin with just over three minutes left in the fourth, using a jab step to floor overzealous Magic guard Jalen Suggs before pulling up for a mid-range 2.
Now comes their preparation: The Sixers sat their entire starting five plus their sixth man against the Hawks on Friday. Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn said his rotation decision-making is unaffected by the decisions another team makes with their rosters but if the Sixers follow suit and sit players on Friday, it’s fair to expect the Nets to load manage their players.
On the other side of the same coin, practice time has been limited for a team assembled on the fly, and Sunday’s matchup provides an opportunity for Brooklyn to work out some kinks before the playoffs begin.
“‘Be present. Nothing else matters, a week from now, tomorrow, be present in today’s game’,” Vaughn said. “That’s the most important thing and to challenge our group to play four quarters. Like, we haven’t put four aggressive, in-sync quarters together yet. So, great challenge for us to try and do it tonight.”
Extra points
The Nets secured their fifth consecutive playoff berth on Friday. They are among just five teams to secure a playoff spot in each of the last five seasons, joining Boston, Denver, Milwaukee & Philadelphia.
This is also the Nets’ eighth playoff appearance in 11 seasons in Brooklyn. It is the most in any 11-season stretch in the Nets’ NBA history.
