They only forced two turnovers, but racked up the deflections and blocked three shots. Against an Orlando team light on outside shooting, the Nets played some of their most aggressive help defense of the season and held the visitors to 29% shooting in the first quarter.

They didn’t need one, exploding out of the gates with a vengeance, eager to turn the page and climb back above. But Brooklyn had nary an excuse against a Magic team - down Jonathan Isaac, Wendell Carter Jr., and Markelle Fultz - playing the second leg of a back-to-back. The Nets would have to respond without Dorian Finney-Smith, a late scratch from the lineup, though Dennis Smith Jr. He attributed allowing offensive rebounds to a “concentration issue,” he said “we did not do what we discussed, what we said we were going to do,” and ended his postgame presser after three brief minutes, an anomaly for the normally gregarious leader. Jacque Vaughn spoke softly but pointedly after his team’s loss to the Hornets on Thursday. Needing to expel to sour taste of a bad loss to Charlotte, the Nets did that and more, handling the Magic for the second time in a row thanks to a well-rounded effort captained by a career night from Mikal Bridges. They certainly benefitted from the Magic playing the second leg of a back-to-back, as they missed layup after layup, but the Nets simply outplayed their opponent in all facets of the game. On that night, the Nets cracked a code the rest of the league hasn’t been able to could they do it again to right the ship on Saturday night? The Magic entered Saturday riding a franchise-best nine-game winning streak, undefeated since the last time they visited Brooklyn back on November 14th, a 20-point loss. To recapture them, they’d have to defeat the upstart Orlando Magic on Saturday evening, who have sprinted out to a 13-5 start on the back of the league’s third-best defense. But it was not any fun for the Nets, who threw away the good vibes of that three-game winning streak. It was a shootout, to be sure, and an entertaining one at that. Well, aided by some porous Brooklyn defense, the Hornets shot a blistering 58.3% from deep in the Barclays Center on the way to a 129-128 victory.

A fourth straight ‘W’ was a lock on paper, facing a Charlotte Hornets team without their leading man, LaMelo Ball.

Just in the past two weeks, Brooklyn’s first three-game losing streak was immediately followed by a three-game winning streak. The Brooklyn Nets sit at 9-9, but the highs and lows of the adolescent season have left fans feeling anything but average.

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