None of the Nets should lack for motivation after the 111-95 beating they took from the Knicks on Tuesday night at the Garden. But Nik Stauskas and Jahlil Okafor have a little extra added incentive for Wednesday’s game against the 76ers, their first meeting with the Philadelphia team that traded them away last month.
“I think everybody likes to play against his former team,” Nets coach Kenny Atkinson said. “There’s always something special.”
Okafor, Stauskas and a second-round pick arrived from Philadelphia last month in return for Trevor Booker. Tuesday night, Okafor grabbed 13 rebounds while Stauskas had 12 points in 25 minutes.
Now they will get a shot to beat the team that cast them aside, both of them buried in “The Process” of Philadelphia before being traded away.
“Yeah, it’ll be weird for sure, just because I spent 2 ½ years there,” Stauskas told The Post. “I’m still pretty close to some of the guys on the team. But most importantly I just want to get a win. That’d be the best part, is just getting a win against them. It’s definitely going to be a weird playing against them.”
Stauskas’ 43.9 percent shooting from deep is the best of any Net who has attempted at least 24 3-pointers. With Joe Harris a pending free agent and the trade deadline Feb. 8, Nets general manager Sean Marks must decide how much of Harris’ production Stauskas could replicate.
Stauskas is making $3,807,146, and the Nets can make him a qualifying offer of $5,132,033 for next year.
“One thing the Nets have seen with Nik is every time he’s gotten a chance to play real minutes, he’s played really well, had really positive nights,” Stauskas’ agent, Mark Bartelstein, told The Post. “You never want anybody to get hurt. But most opportunities in the NBA come about because somebody gets hurt.
“If you get an opportunity, you have to take advantage of it. And Nik has done that. Nik is excited about any opportunity he gets and when he’s gotten them, he’s made good.”
D’Angelo Russell, who was back in the Nets’ lineup, scored seven points on 3-of-11 shooting and looked rusty.
“He’s got a ways to go. He’ll tell you that. Which is normal,” Atkinson said. “The guy was out for awhile and he’s playing a tough position in this league. Guys are in him and I just think it’s going to take time. It is what it is.”
Atkinson was noncommittal whether Russell would play in the second half the back-to-back.
“I don’t know. We’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see … what he looks like [Wednesday]. There’s always an evaluation after a game, after a return-from-injury-management we call it.”
Rondae Hollis-Jefferson will miss several more games, while Caris LeVert is day-to-day. Both have groin injuries.
Nets owner Milkhail Prokhorov was named on the so-called “Putin List,” a compendium by the U.S. Treasury of more than 200 Russian oligarchs, billionaires and officials who are proposed targets of sanctions for their close ties to the Kremlin. But Prokhorov isn’t expected to be sanctioned and the move isn’t likely to impact Nets business or the sale of a 49 percent stake in the team to Taiwanese billionaire Joe Tsai.