Nets certainly are trending in the right direction

Sure, you can look at the score of Friday night’s Nets game and say this is a team that knows how to dominate. You can look at the standings and note that they’re on the rise in the Eastern Conference. And you can point to James Harden’s triple-double against the Thunder and mention how impossible he is to contain.

But the Nets' 147-125 win over the Thunder also told another story: The story of a team whose players finally are melding together, a team that believes this is only the beginning of its development.

That’s pretty impressive, considering the Nets tangled with the history books on Friday: They matched the franchise record for points scored in regulation and players to score in double digits (nine).

Pivotally, while it’s mostly been Harden and Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant (who didn’t play Friday because of load maintenance), it’s also been guys like Joe Harris and Bruce Brown.

"I told the guards, [Luguentz] Dort does a really good job of trying to be physical and stay on my body the entire game, so our guards did a really good job of coming and screening, and that allowed me to get downhill, that allowed them to get open shots and things like that," said Harden, who had 25 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds. "They can incorporate it into the game on the fly, and we can go out there and execute it.

"That’s going to be huge later in the season when games are closer and going into the postseason. Just small little keys like that to where they go out there, listen, they go execute it, and it makes our team that much better."

There still are some holes the Nets need to address — something Steve Nash highlighted in his postgame news conference — but they’re getting better. The Nets came into Saturday 25th in the league in points allowed and 23rd in defensive rating, and though they don’t need an airtight defense to succeed, it does need to improve.

They hope 6-10 Norvel Pelle, who will join the team Sunday, and swingman Iman Shumpert, who was re-signed on Saturday, will help.

"There’s a familiarity growing on both ends of the floor," Nash said. "We’ve got a long ways to go defensively. It’s not our forte or strong suit, but we’ve got to be clean with our game plan and make sure that we’re talking and anticipating actions."

Still, he’s pleased with his team’s chemistry and how quickly Harden — who’s played only eight games as a Net since being acquired from the Rockets — has meshed with Irving.

"James is a master at leading that and manipulating the floor, and obviously with Ky and Kevin’s scoring ability, it’s very potent at that end of the floor," Nash said. "We’ve got to continue to refine offensively to find that connectivity, and then defensively the same thing — just get sharper and cleaner with all of our reads and talking and executing at that end. We can be solid down there."

Irving added that they’ve pinpointed a lot of their weaknesses and are working on them systematically. The Nets are never going to be a defense-first team, but they can find a balance.

"What we’re doing now is just finding a continuity to be able to utilize the strengths that we do have," Irving said. "Obviously [we just have to pay attention to] the little details of the game, boxing out, getting back on defense, limiting ourselves from turning the ball over and just staying communicative. And then everything else is pretty much in control for us."

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.