Nets wake up in second half and rout Hawks

Teams in playoff position cannot afford to waste home games against the NBA’s lesser teams, especially when the immediate schedule only grows more challenging from here.

The surging Nets spotted Atlanta a monstrous first quarter Wednesday night, but they overcame a 19-point deficit for their largest comeback victory of the season, improving to 13-4 since Dec. 7 with a 116-100 win over the Hawks at Barclays Center.

“First of all, no easy games in the NBA, that’s for sure,” Nets coach Kenny Atkinson said. “They blitzed us in the first quarter. I think a lot of that was them and some of it was us . . . It’s like you’re playing with fire when you dig a hole like that.

“I hate repeating this, but I don’t think we win that game last year or the year before. But I thought we really locked down and showed a lot of maturity.”

D’Angelo Russell scored a team-high 23 points and Joe Harris chipped in 16 as the Nets (21-22) nudged percentage points ahead of Miami for the sixth playoff position in the Eastern Conference. DeMarre Carroll added 17 points and Spencer Dinwiddie netted 16. The Nets’ next three opponents — Toronto on the road, Boston at home and at Houston — boast a combined .642 winning percentage this season.

“It’s huge, because a game like this is a trap game,” said veteran big man Ed Davis, who had eight points and 16 rebounds in 22:32 off the bench. “You got a team that’s not going to make the playoffs and you’re supposed to win that game. You don’t look ahead, but you know that you got a tough stretch coming up . . . This is a game that you have to get, especially if you want to be playing after April 15.”

Brooklyn had connected for a season-best 144 points the previous time Atlanta was in town on Dec. 16. That was the fifth victory of the seven-game win streak that catapulted the Nets back into playoff contention, despite the loss in late November of leading scorer Caris LeVert to ankle surgery.

“We’re a resilient team, a team that gets off the mat when something bad happens,” Atkinson said.

The undermanned Nets had squandered a chance to reach .500 with Monday’s rough road loss to the Celtics, but Harris and Carroll returned to the lineup after missing the Boston game with minor injuries.

Still, the Hawks erupted for 38 points in the first quarter, including 14 of 16 from the free-throw line. They led by as many as 19 early in the second, before Russell and Dinwiddie fueled an 11-0 surge to help the Nets slash that hole to six points, 57-51, by halftime.

Harris, who came in ranked second in the NBA in three-point percentage, buried three shots from long range in the first three minutes of the third quarter for a 66-63 Brooklyn turnaround advantage. Davis’ traditional three-point play in the closing seconds of the period boosted the Nets’ cushion to six entering the final quarter.

The Nets opened the fourth on a 14-3 run, featuring five points from Carroll, to cruise to their 13th win in 17 games since their record bottomed out at 8-18 with an eight-game losing skid through Dec. 5.

“That’s where the veteran leadership comes in. They’re the ones that are vocalizing it, talking about the aspirations that we have as a team, and we can’t have these lapses if we want to get where we’re trying to go,” Harris said. “Considering where we’ve been to where we’re at now, it says a lot about the team.”