Pacers rout Nets to close Barclays schedule

NEW YORK — If the injury report didn’t say it, the first half did.

The Nets closed their 2025-26 home schedule Thursday night at Barclays Center with a 123-94 loss to the Indiana Pacers, a game that looked and felt like two teams protecting lottery position. Brooklyn trailed by 26 points at halftime, and that was pretty much it.

Both teams dressed nine available players, with most of the recognizable names on the bench in street clothes. The Nets finished the season 12-29 at Barclays.

E.J. Liddell led the Nets with a career-high 26 points and 10 rebounds. Obi Toppin paced Indiana with 26 points, nine rebounds and three assists.

The loss kept Brooklyn in third place in the lottery standings with two games left. The Nets have one fewer win than the Utah Jazz and Sacramento Kings, who are tied for fourth, and Brooklyn needs to lose its final two games to maintain sole possession of third.

That broader picture is exactly why Thursday played out the way it did. The Pacers were also sitting key pieces, and once Brooklyn fell behind big early, there wasn’t much urgency to change the script. The Nets never recovered from the halftime hole, and the second half mostly served as a countdown to the end of a long home slate.

But even with a season that’s been defined by injuries, youth and long nights on the scoreboard, Nets head coach Jordi Fernández has consistently talked about Barclays Center as more than a win-loss split. Before the finale, he made sure to point the conversation back to the people in the seats.

“The loyalty and the support has been amazing, especially going into a season that we didn’t win a lot of games,” Fernández said. “But all our guys worked and played hard, got better, and to feel the support for what we’re trying to do and the plan we have is pretty special.”

Fernández said he hoped fans saw a group that carried itself the right way, even when it wasn’t clean.

“I think that it’s a group that is going to represent the borough and go out there and fight and get better,” he said. “Not always going to be perfect, but I think that we give our best and we compete.”

That’s the lens he kept returning to as the home schedule closed. The record at home didn’t offer much comfort, but there were nights in the building that felt like real glimpses of what this rebuild could become, the kind of nights Fernández pointed to when he talked about a team finding its identity and “getting 1% better.”

Here are a few that will stick.

There was the 127-82 win over Milwaukee on Dec. 14, which tied the largest margin of victory in franchise history at 45 points.

There was the one-point overtime loss to Orlando, 104-103, when Egor Dëmin erupted for 18 points on a perfect 5-for-5 shooting from 3 in the fourth quarter and overtime after scoring his first point on a free throw with 3:22 left in regulation. Dëmin hit a game-tying 3 at the end of the fourth, then the go-ahead shot in overtime, becoming the first NBA rookie to hit multiple go-ahead or game-tying 3s in the final 30 seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime in the same game since Kevin Durant in 2008. Dëmin also set the Nets franchise record for 3-pointers made in an overtime by any player since tracking began in 1997-98, and tied the most by an NBA rookie.

There was Jan. 4 against Denver, a 127-115 win in Michael Porter Jr.’s first game against his former team, when he scored 27 points with 11 rebounds, five assists and one block, and went 9 for 9 at the free throw line.

There was Nolan Traoré’s career-high 23 points against Washington on April 5.

There was also the offensive peak of the season at Barclays Center, the night Brooklyn scored 80 points in the first half against Washington on Feb. 7, its most in any half this season and most since scoring 91 in the first half against Golden State in December 2022. The Nets tied their season high with 36 assists, and six different players recorded at least four assists in the same game, a franchise mark that has only been hit eight times and hadn’t happened since March 2022.

Nic Claxton’s best scoring night came Feb. 9 against Chicago, when he posted a career-high 28 points with 10 rebounds and four assists on 12-for-15 shooting.

And Day’Ron Sharpe had his own two-game stretch of statement performances at Barclays, starting with 19 points, 14 rebounds, five assists and three steals against the Lakers on Feb. 3, then another 19 points on Feb. 7 against Washington, when he and Danny Wolf became the first duo in Nets history to each record at least 16 points, seven rebounds and four assists off the bench in the same game.

Thursday didn’t add much to that list. It was a game that served the standings more than the senses, and the result reflected it. Fernández said the message he wanted to send in the finale was simple, appreciation, and a promise that the work will continue.

“To appreciate what they do for us,” he said. “It means a lot, from the support that we get in our events that are not in the arena, like Practice in the Park and all the other community events. … We’re going to keep working, getting better and competing so when they watch us play, they’re proud of what we’re doing.”