BOSTON — The old Nets essentially ended last month during a trip to Boston.
The new Nets may have begun there Friday night with a landmark win.
After struggling since they traded away Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, the Nets broke a four-game skid with the first signature win of their post-superstar era.
And they did it with the biggest comeback in the NBA all season, a 115-105 Mikal Bridges-led victory before a stunned sellout crowd of 19,156 at TD Garden.
Trailing by 28 in the second quarter, the Nets put on a 51-19 blitz that spanned intermission and changed the game — and perhaps the direction of their season.
The rally matched the biggest comebacks in franchise history, achieved Feb 16, 2022 at the Knicks and March 19, 2019 at Sacramento.
And it was a template of what the Nets now hope to look like, with Bridges’ scoring backed by active defending.
“We were [switching] one-through-four in a drop. Then we went one-through-five, and we stayed with it. We were doing really well. We were just covering for each other,” Bridges said. “That’s the biggest thing. You make mistakes, we’re all human. But is your brother going to pick you up and step up for you? And your other brother going to help the next guy? We did a great job at that.”
The last time the Nets played at TD Garden — a 139-96 loss on Feb. 1 — seems like years ago. It was an entirely different era, with Irving first vowing to figure out a way to get past the juggernaut Celtics, then two days later demanding a trade that broke up the Nets’ supposed superteam.
In their return to TD Garden, the Nets showed the first hint of a promising future.
They had lost six of seven since Bridges and Cam Johnson arrived from Phoenix in the Durant trade.
On Friday, however, Bridges poured in a game-high 38 points and grabbed 10 rebounds.
He shook off a minor knock to the knee and looked every bit the part of a team building block. And Johnson shook off a slow start to add 20 points on his 27th birthday.
“We just started adding up those stops, and that wears on teams,” Johnson said. “There was a point in that first quarter, early second, where we looked at each other and said, ‘We’re not going out this way.’ It brought us together. The only way to get through things is to do it together and go through it together. That resilience we showed was big.
“And you have to give a lot of credit to Mikal Bridges. He came out and hit big bucket after big bucket, tough bucket after tough bucket.”
Bridges had scored 30 points just twice in his career before arriving in Brooklyn, but has cracked that barrier three times in his past six games.
This time, he outdueled Jaylen Brown, who led Boston with 35 points.
And Johnson helped hold Jayson Tatum (22 points) to 0-for-7 from behind the 3-point arc.
The Nets needed all of that to dig out of a hole of their own making.
They trailed 13-3 right out of the gate, a deficit that swelled to 51-23 on a Brown layup with 7:23 remaining in the first half.
But the Nets — who had allowed at least 30 points in 13 of 17 quarters since returning from the All-Star break — suddenly rediscovered their defense.
They made stops, which let them run and get into early offense.
The result was that extended 51-19 run.
The Nets shot 65 percent, including 6-for-9 from deep.
They were sparked by a suddenly harassing defense that held the Celtics (45-19) to 9-for-25 from the floor.
Johnson’s free throws with 6:11 left in the third quarter put the Nets ahead 72-70, and Nic Claxton capped the run to hand them a 74-70 lead with 5:41 left in the third.
Spencer Dinwiddie, who had 17 points and eight assists, padded the lead to 106-90 on a step-back 3-pointer with 6:54 to play.
The rest was garbage time — but shockingly, the Nets were on the right end of it.
“We’ve been in this situation, what, three times now?” Dorian Finney-Smith said. “So it was either shy away from it or take the challenge. And we took the challenge, stayed together. That’s a great team, so we got to a team effort and that’s what it was.”
