CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There weren’t all that many positives to be taken from the Nets’ 111-96 loss to the Hornets on Thursday night. But Dante Cunningham’s performance certainly filled the bill of a silver lining.
Cunningham, off the bench, had team-highs of 22 points and 12 rebounds. The points were his season-high, and the rebounds matched his season-high.
“I’m here for whatever [coach Kenny Atkinson] needs. If it’s five minutes or 30 minutes, it doesn’t matter to me. I just want to see us win,” Cunningham told The Post. “If I’ve got to play five minutes and we get the W, I’m going to be way more happy than I am now.”
Cunningham, 30, was acquired from the Pelicans at the trade deadline and has seen his scoring increase in all four games since. He hit 4-of-7 from 3-point range Thursday.
“Very positive, very positive,” Atkinson said. “We need his veteran leadership, we need his veteran toughness, his physicality. You can see he’s an NBA player, and he’s going to help our young guys get better. Love his demeanor and if he can make some shots like he did tonight he can really help us.”
With his play, the 6-foot-8, 230-pounder is making a strong case for more minutes, even when Rondae Hollis-Jefferson returns from his groin injury.
“Sure. Every time we’ve put him in he’s played pretty well,” Atkinson said. “He got a little fatigued during the game so we got him out. But I’d say yes he’s someone that can really help us going forward.”
Atkinson said he still hopes Hollis-Jefferson and Caris LeVert (knee) will be back for Monday’s game against the Bulls.
“They both worked out pretty hard again [Thursday] morning, but we’ll see how they look,” said Atkinson, who expects to ease both back in. “Always. That’s how we function. We’ll build them up and see what that looks like, talk to our performance team. … Don’t expect them to play 48 minutes the first night. Not going to happen.”
Atkinson admitted how much the Nets have missed Jeremy Lin’s competitiveness, but said the injured guard has kept his morale up.
“Incredible. Shocked at how positive he’s been. Jeremy’s mindset is I’m going to come back better than ever. That’s just how he thinks. So he’s been extremely positive,” Atkinson said. “I was worried about that, being away that long. I’m sure he gets down sometimes, but when he’s been around us he’s been fantastic. “We miss him obviously. We miss the competitor that he is, we miss the defender that he is. And obviously he plays the style of ball that we want to play. We really miss him.”
Lin left Charlotte to sign with the Nets, and Hornets coach Steve Clifford knows how tough the injuries have been on his former player.
“It’s got to be brutal — I text with him once in a while — especially a guy like him, a highly committed, highly competitive guy,” Clifford said. “He’s a terrific worker. … You hate to see [injuries to] guys like him who put so much into it and made obviously terrific gains from the time he got into the league.”