Nets deserve hand after making postseason despite chaotic year

When the NBA trade deadline came and went in February, there was no guarantee that playoffs would still be a possibility for the Nets after Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving had been traded. Mikal Bridge, Cam Johnson, Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith were solid pieces for the Nets to get back in those deals, but keeping the Nets a playoff team was viewed as a tough task.

Now, several months later, the Nets are not only going to the postseason, but they’re doing so without having to go through the play-in round like they had to do last season. The Nets will face the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round, which will begin on Saturday in Philadelphia.

But give a hand to head coach Jacque Vaughn and the rest of the Nets players that remained on the roster after a pair of trades that many viewed as the end of Brooklyn’s season. Vaughn quickly reiterated to everyone that the goal of the ball club wouldn’t change even with two of the NBA’s biggest names no longer on the court for the Nets.

The players, led by Mikal Bridges, bought in right away and never let the outside noise get the better of them.

“No, not really,’’ Bridges told the New York Post when asked if they used the chatter as motivation. “People talk and stuff, (but) they don’t, I mean, you don’t know. … You’re not in here every day, you’re not working hard, being in the gym every single day and (knowing) how much work we’re trying to put in. So, no, that wasn’t it.

“It was just to ourselves and what we all wanted. We all wanted to win and all wanted to be in the playoffs. So we just took that upon us to just work hard and (the) coaches being on us, and us listening and learning.”

Bridges, in particular, has been better than anyone could have imagined since arriving in Brooklyn. In the 27 games he’s played since being traded to the Nets, Bridges has averaged 26.1 points a game and shot 47.5% from the field.

That has included 11 games where Bridges has had 30-plus points and three games where he had 40 or more points. And the emergence of him as a star couldn’t have come at a better time for the Nets.

But Bridges wasn’t the only player to step up since getting to Brooklyn and the group has done a good job of battling through some of the initial awkwardness to get to a point where players were understanding their roles better.

Things haven’t been perfect by any means, but they’ve gotten the job done.

“I think it speaks to the character of the group,” Dinwiddie said. “The maturity, the selflessness. I think everyone came in here trying to figure out what their job is going to be and execute it to the best of their ability and push forward.’’

The Nets won’t go into their first-round series with the Sixers as the favorite, but after everything they’ve endured this season the Nets have earned the chance to try and prove those that doubted them wrong.