Fresh off claiming Coach of the Month honors for the second time in three months, Jason Kidd guided his Brooklyn Nets to one of their most bountiful wins of the season on Tuesday night.

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It wasn’t easy, but the Nets pulled out a hard-fought 105-96 victory over the Houston Rockets behind 32 points from Joe Johnson and contributions up and down the rest of the roster, including five other Nets scoring in double figures.

With the victory, Brooklyn clinched an Eastern Conference playoff berth for the second consecutive year, completing a stark turnaround from the team’s 10-21 start to the season and taking an important step in attaining their goals for the year.

“That’s something that we felt we could accomplish as a team,” Coach Kidd said after the victory. “Unfortunately we didn’t start off well and some people didn’t believe it, but we just stayed the course.”

To follow up that answer, Jason was asked if his confidence that the team would right the ship and find a way to the postseason ever wavered. He noted that he’s been around the league too long to give up so easily.

“I’ve seen too many things, I’ve seen too many games,” he said. “The league is very fragile. Things change quickly. When you look at the group of guys in that locker room, they all believed that if we stayed together, we stayed professional and we worked at it,

[it would work out]. We took our lumps, but we felt that we could get better and right now we are. But we still have a long way to go.”

Tuesday night’s win also extend Brooklyn’s Barclays Center winning streak to a franchise-best 14 consecutive games at home. In the process, the 2013-14 squad passed the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 Nets, both teams Jason played on, for the longest win-streak on the team’s home floor.

“It means a lot because I remember there was a time when we couldn’t get a win in this building — here in our own building,” Johnson said. “So this is definitely a special moment and we are going to keep trying to build on it.”

But the Nets have already been building toward the moment for a while, Tuesday’s matchup with the Rockets being another obstacle in their path. Houston was, however, a bigger obstacle than most.

Pegged as a championship contender and with 49 wins already in the bag on the season, the Rockets also entered the game as owners of a 14-game winning streak of their own over the Nets. That streak dated back to March of 2006, when J-Kidd was still running the point in New Jersey.

The importance of the game was recognized in its airing on national TV and the presence of familiar faces in the crowd. Sitting courtside were Jay Z, perhaps the most famous Nets fan, and Beyonce, a Houston native.

The game got off to a rough start for Coach Kidd’s squad, as James Harden put on a one-man show for Houston, dropping 12 points in the opening quarter to lead the Rockets. But not to be outdone, Johnson responded with 11 points of his own, and as a result, the Nets held a 29-24 lead at the end of the first.

The second quarter saw the shorthanded Nets bench struggle with the fast pace of the Rockets, allowing Houston to briefly take the lead. However, when Kidd sent his starters back into the contest, they went on an 11-0 run to seize the lead.

The first half did have some hiccups for the Nets. Normally strong from beyond the arc, Coach Kidd’s team was just 1-of-11 from deep in the half. However, Brooklyn shot 52.3 percent from the field, and Johnson poured in 17 first half points to pace the Nets. After the game, Jason praised the performance of Johnson.

“He is by far the guy that’s been the most consistent for us all season,” Coach Kidd said. “We need him to be dominant like he was tonight from the post, but also from behind the arc. The other nice thing is that he’s so unselfish with his teammates, creating a double team, finding the open guy and letting other guys finish. He’s the total package and he’s showing that right now.”

Brooklyn also did solid work defensively in the opening two quarters with eight first-half steals leading to 10 Houston turnovers and a 54-51 halftime advantage for the Nets.

They expanded upon that lead early in the third quarter, and when Johnson buried a three with 4:11 left in the quarter to give the Nets an 11-point lead, it appeared as though they might finally pull away from the Rockets.

Instead, Houston coach Kevin McHale quickly called a timeout, and the reprieve sparked a Rockets run. Within minutes, Houston cut Brooklyn’s lead from 11 to 1. But just like their approach to this season’s comeback from a bad start, the Nets never wavered.

Houston Rockets v Brooklyn Nets

With Brooklyn ahead by just one, 80-79, with about a minute remaining in the third quarter, Johnson knocked down a huge trey to give them a four-point lead heading into the final quarter. Coach Kidd was asked after the game why he thinks the contributions of Johnson sometimes fly under the radar. He noted that Joe’s workman-like approach to the game might have something to do with it.

“Sometimes he goes unnoticed and he has a quiet [32] points,” Kidd said. “It might look too easy. He doesn’t celebrate. It’s like the saying when you score a touchdown, ‘act like you’ve been there before,’ and that’s what he does. When he scores, there’s no celebration, it’s just about taking care of business, and that’s his personality.”

Though Johnson was the game’s star with the 30 points in the first three quarters, the final frame was where everything else finally came together for Brooklyn.

Although much was to be made of the Nets efficient offense, which shot 50 percent from the field and outscored the Rockets 22-17 in the quarter, it was Brooklyn’s defense that won them the game.

When the Rockets brought Harden back into the game at the 8:54 mark with the Nets ahead by just seven, Brooklyn gave him nothing. The Houston All-Star got off just two shots and failed to register a point in the final frame, and the Nets held his team to just 30 percent shooting in the fourth.

Houston Rockets v Brooklyn Nets

For the game, the Nets held Houston to 38.1 percent from the field, while shooting 53 percent themselves. The sharp shooting allowed Brooklyn to score 104 or more points for its eighth straight game, the longest such streak for the franchise since the 1986-1987 season.

“I thought tonight the guys gave multiple efforts on the defensive end,” Jason said of the defense. “We talked about that. This is not a team where just one guy drives and we help, they’re going to have multiple drives, pump-faking the three and trying to create an opportunity for a teammate. I thought we did a good job with that tonight.”

It was yet another sign of how far the Nets have come. As Kidd noted, the challenges Brooklyn faced early in the season tested their character, and their ability to overcome those obstacles and make the progress they have is something to be proud of.

“When you look at the high expectations, the new faces, maybe the new defensive schemes, offensive schemes, guys just finding their way, being traded for the first time, there’s a lot of different things that are going on, and you’ve got to put the pieces of the puzzle together,” Kidd said. “You sprinkle in some injuries. It’s just a matter of time, being patient.”

That said, with nine games still remaining in the 2013-14 season, Coach Kidd isn’t about to let his players rest on their laurels now just because they’ve clinched a spot in the postseason.

“We’re in, but that doesn’t mean the season is over,” he said. “We have a long way to go. There is a lot of basketball to be played and there’s a lot of room for us to get better.”

NEXT UP

The Nets won’t have to wait long for their next opportunity to do that, as they will complete their 17th back-to-back of the season on Wednesday night when they take on the crosstown rival New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden.

A year ago at this time, Coach Kidd was on the other side of the rivalry, helping the Knicks put together a 13-game winning streak that covered parts of March and April, leading to a 54-win season, an Atlantic Division title, the subsequent playoff berth and even a first round playoff victory.

Indiana Pacers v New York Knicks

One year later, the Knicks are struggling to even make the postseason. With a record of 32-43 entering Wednesday’s tilt, New York currently sits one game out of the final playoff spot in the East. According to another former Knick, Metta World Peace, who was released by New York this season, the absence of J-Kidd is a big reason behind New York’s struggles in 2013-14.

“I spoke to a lot of people and a lot of people are saying Jason Kidd was the reason [for the Knicks’ poor play this year],” World Peace told ESPN New York in late February. “I spoke to Tyson about it and Tyson said Jason Kidd used to do a lot of adjustments on the court. So that was an issue that we had this year with Jason Kidd becoming a coach. A lot of times they kept saying, ‘We miss that presence of Jason Kidd.'”

After splitting four games last season, including one Jason won for the Knicks with a three-pointer in the final second, Brooklyn and New York have again split their meetings thus far this season.

New York launched the first salvo against Coach Kidd’s Nets with a 113-83 win at Barclays Center on December 5th, but Brooklyn exacted revenge with a 103-80 victory at MSG on Jan. 20. The teams meet twice more in the final few weeks of the season, including the April 15th season finale at Barclays Center.

But first they’ll meet at the Garden on Wednesday night where tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m. EST. The game can be seen nationwide on ESPN.

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