The Nets need to rack up more wins like this to be truly elite

There are nights like this for any team with a dash of championship ambition, nights where the most basic of all competitive elements is on display. The Nets have been looking baffled lately. They seemed disinterested. It’s a long season. The spasms of mediocre basketball are inevitable. But if you are the equal of your reputation, these things must pass.

They had lost three games in a row and they looked pretty awful doing it. They had just suffered a terrible loss in Detroit to a Pistons team who, some nights, already seemed to be playing the rope. They were the worst kind of pioneers: at the top of their game against great teams, lowering themselves to the level of the dregs of lower teams.

That was the message Steve Nash had for his players ahead of facing the Pacers at Barclays Center on Wednesday night in their final game before heading west for what should be an extremely interesting five-game trip:

“You can’t have fun like you play.”

The Nets had fun on Wednesday night, certainly for a first half in which they not only hit the Pacers, but also erased all traces of imagination from the game. There was a 32-5 run that closed the half that really didn’t end until two minutes had passed in the third quarter, the madness had increased to 39-8 and the score was ridiculous from 69-33.

You play well for a long period of time as well, regardless of whether the Nets spent most of the second half lying on lounge chairs, which allows the Pacers to outdo them 61-35 the rest of the time. A victory is a victory. This was 104-94. He sent them on their merry way, feeling much better about themselves.

And by the time they cross San Francisco, Sacramento, Phoenix and Los Angeles (for a very interesting two steps with the Lakers and the Clippers), they will be reunited with Kevin Durant, they will be whole and they can get back to work to maximize their pleasure.

“You could tell from the start that they were locked up,” Nash said, “and when they’re locked up you can see what they’re capable of.”

It certainly helped that the Pacers played the first half as a team that showed up on the first ball, but all the Nets credit, Durant lacked and didn’t necessarily receive the offensive efforts A – over the other two-thirds of their formidable troika, Kyrie Irving and James Harden (although combined, the two were a stunning 27-for-27 from the line).

No, during the stretch that transformed the game, they played like they always do when times are good: with an effortless smoothness that thrills everyone’s basketball purist. Even without Durant, there are so many basketball skills on display when the going goes, that’s probably what makes him twice as maddening when the going the other way.

The Nets, of course, had a few breaks. One is natural: The length of the NBA season, even truncated by 10 games, will give them plenty of time to figure things out. There is still a little less than two-thirds of a season.

The other is a bit more surprising: despite the Nets’ 15-12 pedestrian record, they are still solidly in third place in an Eastern conference, where only the 76ers (18-7) and Bucks (16- 8 enter Wednesday’s Suns game) had had a better-than-average start to the season.

“The communication was there, the effort was there, we haven’t played defense like that all season,” said Joe Harris, who had 17 points. “It’s really good to see us take a step in the right direction.”

The Nets understand all of this perfectly, of course. They know how closely scrutinized they are and seem to congratulate themselves on it, even if that means regularly acknowledging their shortcomings. Jeff Green spoke to his teammates after Tuesday’s mess at Motor City, and while it may not have been a full-fledged sermon to Jesus, it touched a common nerve: a good team that doesn’t play. well is a heartbreak. thing to see.

But one who does?

For a long period of Wednesday night we saw what it looked like. Choose your adjective: exciting, breathtaking, exhilarating. As the Nets take their show to the road, they’re hoping they can add a little more to that stack, and not the other, which includes: Frustrating. Confusing. Exasperating.