Rebuild taking shape despite Nets’ record

Brooklyn basketball fanatics might not see it yet, but Jordi Fernández does.

The Nets’ second-year head coach has noticed a steady uptick in his team’s performance of late, despite our borough’s NBA franchise owning one of the worst records in the league and an 0-7 mark at Barclays Center.

“I wasn’t happy with the way we were competing a few games ago, and now, for four straight games, we’ve played a respectable brand of basketball, a competitive brand of basketball,” Fernández told the media following Tuesday’s 113-99 defeat to Boston in Downtown Brooklyn.

The Nets hung tough with the Celtics for three quarters, erasing most of an 11-point deficit before fading in the final period.

It wasn’t that Brooklyn was non-competitive over the last 12 minutes, it’s just that Boston, a team that won an NBA title together two seasons ago, knew how to get it done down the stretch while the Nets continued to learn.

Just ask Michael Porter Jr., who put up 25 points in the defeat after totaling 34 in Brooklyn’s second win of the year at Washington last Sunday.

“We got a young team, and we’re newly playing together, and I think (the Celtics have) just been in so many situations in the fourth quarter as a group, that they kind of knew how to execute down the stretch,” he noted following his career-high seventh game of the season with 20-plus points.

“And we’re still figuring that out.”

The Nets (2-12) were coming off back-to-back blowout losses vs. Detroit and at the New York Knicks, respectively, before hunkering down to play a grittier, if not more efficient, game vs. Toronto here on Nov. 11.

That 119-109 loss in Brooklyn’s NBA Cup opener was followed by one of the most heartbreaking defeats of the young campaign.

The Nets allowed Orlando to sneak past them for a 105-98 triumph last Friday. The Magic scored the game’s final 11 points, a stinging loss that Porter took the brunt of the blame for despite putting up team highs of 24 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists.

“I think we made strides, but I think we got to get organized and on the same page,” the team’s undisputed veteran leader noted.

“In the fourth quarter, when the game tightens up, you got to play different style of basketball, because you’re not going to get as many transition points, you’re not going to get as many easy looks.”

Fernández saw his team execute for four quarters in Sunday’s win in our nation’s capital against a Wizards squad that is also winless at home and hasn’t scored a second victory yet.

Even though they committed six turnovers and only made four field goals in the fourth quarter at Barclays on Tuesday, the coach wasn’t ready to say he wasn’t impressed by the development of the youngest roster in the NBA.

“I think playing this competitive round of basketball against a very good team, it’s important,” Fernández noted.

“A lot of you guys will not see the wins on the standings, and we have high standards, obviously, we want to win. We play to win, we competed to win. But also, the wins are the future Nets that will play in a few years in a winning team are getting their minutes and getting better.”

Porter has been asked repeatedly if it is difficult to wait for the rest of the Nets to sprout up around him after he spent the first six years of his career chasing and eventually winning an NBA title in Denver.

The 27-year-old forward readily admits that the Nuggets weren’t exactly ready to win big, or close out fourth quarters, when he arrived in the Mile High community as a first-round pick in 2018.

“It’s not a frustration, because it’s not just them, it’s all of us,” he said in defense of the ongoing Brooklyn renovation project. “We’re all in this together. It’s not necessarily young guys, it’s when new groups of players get together.

“So it’s not like I’m looking at it like the young guys need to catch up,” Porter added. “I’m looking at it like, man, we got a whole new group who’s never played together, so all of us as a unit needs to continue to learn each other, where we like the ball, what plays we need to run for each other, which I think we made strides in.”

Strides are one thing and winning is another.

Even Fernández addressed the team’s inability to win a game at Barclays, beseeching Brooklynites to show patience and to take note of how rookies like Egor Dёmin and Drake Powell are learning on the job.

“So, we just want our fans, especially here at home, to be proud of what we do,” he said. “I think nights like tonight, they should be proud of the young guys, or the whole group, the whole group is very young, so that’s how we move on to the next one.”

The Nets will finish off their home-and-home series with the Celtics in Boston on Friday.

Regardless of the result of Brooklyn’s third NBA Cup game, Fernández will have a much different view of how well the Nets are learning to compete.

“Yeah, I see a different game than you guys. I don’t see a struggle out there. I just see, like, you know, everybody turns it over, everybody misses shots,” Fernández said when defending his decision to sit Dёmin for most of the fourth quarter Tuesday.

“I make mistakes too when I sub guys at times, so I live with my mistakes,” he added. “I live with them, and I’m very happy with how they played, how they competed. (I’m) very, very happy and proud of the rookies and everybody else.”

Tip-off at Boston’s TD Garden on Friday is slated for 7:30 p.m.

The game will air locally on the YES Network.