One night after comeback win, Nets suffer letdown and are blown out by Grizzlies

Late-game magic didn’t travel well. Not this time, not even a little.

Granted, it’s not every day that Caris LeVert can score 51 points, or that two little-known, two-way players burst into color, helping spark a come-from-behind victory against one of the best teams in the league. It’s not every day, too, that a team can make up a double-digit deficit in the fourth quarter.

So call the Nets’ loss against the Grizzlies on Wednesday night what it was: a letdown, and a pretty big one, in the form of a 118-79 drubbing at Barclays Center — all coming after a stirring win against the Celtics on Tuesday. It ended with a chorus of boos and Kenny Atkinson having a “good, old-fashioned communication” with his team in the form of a long postgame meeting that had the coach coming to the lectern almost one half-hour after the game ended.

“We didn’t like our compete level and our spirit wasn’t where we wanted it to be,” Atkinson said. “We came off a really good win last night. We didn’t build on that. I didn’t feel we had . . . our spirit in the right place and that’s disappointing.”

It’s true that things that made Tuesday’s 21-point comeback against the Celtics exhilarating — the contributions from Chris Chiozza and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot — also made Wednesday deflating. Despite playing in the second part of an away-home back-to-back, four of the Nets starters were well-rested. The Grizzlies, eighth in the Western Conference, were equitable opponents, and Atkinson said before the game that victories like the one against the Celtics could be “program building.”

Maybe, but not quite yet.

This time, the Nets starters came out sluggishly, losing a seven-point first-quarter lead and essentially falling from there. They were outscored 66-34 in the second half.

Chiozza, however, did score 14 points, reaching double figures for the first time in his 25-game NBA career.

The Nets trailed by 17 in the third quarter and that ballooned in the fourth. They shot 7-for-42 from three-point range, and 33.3% overall. They were outrebounded 59-42. Spencer Dinwiddie was held to four points in 27 minutes and Jarrett Allen scored six points in 29. The Grizzlies’ Josh Jackson led all scorers with 19 points.

“We can always control your demeanor, your attitude, those sorts of things and how you play,” Joe Harris said. “And that’s probably the lowest we’ve had for each one of those intangibles this season.”

The Nets trailed 52-45 at the half, primarily behind a weak second quarter in which nearly all of their starters struggled from the field. Dinwiddie was shooting 1-for-7 at the break and 0-for-5 from downtown.

The Nets actually led by seven midway through the first quarter, but a 10-0 Grizzlies run made short work of that. The Grizzlies outscored the Nets 30-22 in the second quarter, including nine points on five turnovers.

One bright spot remained Chiozza, the two-way player who announced himself during a sparkplug performance against the Celtics Tuesday.

The Nets shot 4-for-20 from the perimeter in the first half.

“I thought offensively, in the first half, I thought we were really struggling,” Atkinson said. “We didn’t establish any pace of the game. Then I thought in the first half where they kind of pounded us was on the boards, so we’d get a stop, get another stop, get another stop, they were pounding us on the boards. That affects your disposition sometimes. You shouldn’t let it, but it did tonight.”

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.