TORONTO — The Nets usually cough up a game-changing run in the third quarter. But Friday they waited until the start of the fourth.
Bojan Bogdanovic called that fateful two-minute stretch a black hole, and it was fitting. Once the Nets fell in, they couldn’t get out, spiraling deeper and deeper into a 132-113 loss before a typically raucous crowd of 19,800 at Air Canada Centre.
Locked in a back-and-forth tilt, but trailing just 90-89 after 18 lead changes through the first three quarters, the Nets — an NBA-worst 8-31 — imploded in the fourth. They allowed the first 11 points in just 1:52, en route to a 28-4 Raptors run that turned a golden opportunity into a galling rout.
“We get in a black hole in the beginning of the fourth quarter. We have to extend those good minutes we played for three quarters,’’ said Bogdanovic, who had a team-high 23 points, but saw his Nets drop their ninth straight game and 15th in a row on the road. “Almost every game we have those three or four minutes that we permit the other team to make a run on us. The same thing happened [Friday]. We’re going to build on those first three quarters, play without those black holes we have during the game.”
Bogdanovic is right in this not being an isolated incident, but a maddening habit. It just happened later in this game than it usually does.
Atlantic Division-leading Toronto (26-13) got 28 points from DeMar DeRozan, who had 19 in a torrid back-and-forth third quarter and wasn’t even needed in the fourth. He usually sits until the second timeout, but by then the Nets had folded.
“That’s where we never stop that run. We never seem to cut it early,’’ guard Spencer Dinwiddie told The Post. “It seems to snowball and get to a bigger run and then we’re looking at a 14-point deficit, instead of a four-point deficit.”
It was even worse than that.
Kyle Lowry (20 points, six assists, six rebounds) hit a floating jumper, sandwiched around missed 3-point attempts by Brook Lopez (20 points) and Bogdanovic. Then DeMarre Carroll hit a trey of his own, followed by 3s from Lowry and Terrence Ross.
Just like that, just 1:52 into the fourth, the one-point deficit had bloated to a dozen.
The Nets missed eight of their first nine shots, and collectively put their heads down on defense. The Raptors — who went small with Carroll at power forward — punished Brooklyn’s lackadaisical transition defense.
“I came out and I definitely hurt us. … I absolutely have to make better plays coming out in the fourth,’’ Lopez said. “Absolutely we didn’t respond — I didn’t respond — the right way. You’ve just got to get back, continue playing defense.”
But they didn’t, letting the Raptors hit seven of their first nine shots — including three open 3s — to stretch their run to 18-2 and make it 108-91 with 8:10 left. By the time Lowry drilled a 3-pointer to extend the spurt to 28-4 with 5:45 remaining, the game was out of hand at 118-93.
“That’s resilience. We’ve got to be more resilient,’’ coach Kenny Atkinson said.
“Can we sprint back? That’s a road mentality. That’s a hump we’ve got to get over, letting that deflate us. You can’t let missed shots deflate you.
“You’ve got to have the resiliency on the road — everywhere, at home to — to get over that. It’s a big hurdle for us right now. It’s the one we’re trying to get over. Something bad happens and then not sprinting back, or not getting matched up. It’s something we’ve got to work on to get better.”
Jeremy Lin (hamstring) and Isaiah Whitehead (knee) missed the game.
“We’ll evaluate it day by day see what it looks like [Sunday],’’ Atkinson said of Whitehead. “But he took a pretty good shot.”