TORONTO — The Nets’ preseason finale offered a preview of their regular season. They play hard. They play sloppy. And they lose.
Brooklyn fell to the Raptors 119-114 on Friday, deliberately turning the ball over and digging a deep hole before a fourth-quarter rally fell just short.
Michael Porter Jr. despite making a game-time decision with jet lag, scored a game-high 34 points and 10 rebounds, shooting 6-for-11 from deep. It’s a statement of how porous the forward’s defense was when he finished minus-8.
Defensive Ziaire Williams scored 20 on an encouraging 4-of-8 from behind the arc, a promising sign for the season.
But Cam Thomas had just seven points on uncharacteristic 1-for-10 shooting, 0-for-4 from deep.
Most devastating were the turnovers.
The Nets scored 23 goals to surrender 34 points, but in the first half alone they made 16 for 31. They dug an 18-point hole in the third quarter and spent too much energy trying to dig out.
“Dealing with their physicality was obviously where we struggled in the first half,” coach Jordi Fernández said. “But then we responded and had seven three points in the second half, leaving us at 47 points.”
“Happy with the adversity that our young point guards in particular faced. And happy with how they responded. And I want them all to stay positive and play, take advantage of the next opportunity, because it’s going to happen.”
In the first half, Nolan Traore and Ben Saraf added one point, two assists and six turnovers in 13:20 of ineffective minutes.
Meanwhile, Egor Dëmin, who scored 14 points, had 11 points at halftime in more than 10 turnover-free minutes. Saraf settled down in the second half and put together a 16-1 run in the fourth quarter to briefly take the lead. Short.
Grant Nelson was available after signing an Exhibit 10 agreement.
It’s essentially an invitation to training camp with a late opportunity for the undrafted 23-year-old forward from Alabama to prove himself.
“I think more than anything I just come here and compete every day because I’m actually still competing for a spot and for playing time,” Nelson told The Post. “So basically they just tell me to keep doing what I’m doing and just keep showing up every day and do everything I can to make the guys on the team better and make myself better as well.”
Nelson went to the Las Vegas Summer League with the Nets and was expected to write his Exhibit 10 soon after, but he suffered a nagging injury — “a stress response from overexertion,” he said — and was delayed.
“It was like a little, little injury that kept me out of training camp. And then I feel like I did everything I could. I got the injury really early, so I wasn’t away for long. But it worked out perfectly. So now I’m healthy again and I feel 100 percent.”
Nelson was signed after the Nets waived Zeng Fanbo.
Fernández was cagey about whether the Nets would sign the Chinese to Long Island as they retain his G-League rights.
“We haven’t talked about that. It was great to have him. I don’t have any details about the future yet,” Fernández said. “But he did a great job of being part of the group during the training camp, and we had a great experience in Macau in the two games we played, not just him but the whole group.”
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