SAN ANTONIO — James Harden wasn’t just brilliant Friday night. Better yet, he was bouncy.

And Kyrie Irving was clutch.

In the end, that was more than enough to lead the shorthanded Nets to an easy 117-102 win over the rebuilding Spurs. The Nets went ahead in the third and took over in the fourth in front of 15,068 at AT&T Center.

“James was electric at times and brilliant obviously. The stat line is incredible. And Kyrie is an assassin at times too, just being able to create offense for himself,” coach Steve Nash said after his Nets (29-16) climbed percentage points ahead of the Bulls atop the Eastern Conference. “But overall I thought everybody played a role and did their jobs.”

Harden had a dominant triple-double with 37 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds. After being a minus-26 in his prior two games at Cleveland and Washington, he attacked the rim and even threw down a vicious dunk over Spurs center Jakob Poeltl with 5:04 left in the third quarter.

“I felt like I’m in rookie again. Nah, I just I feel good all game, and just aggressive and taking whatever the defense gave. I struggled last game and I wanted to get back and play better. So it feels really good,” Harden said of his dunk, which had the Nets erupting in celebration. “Because they don’t think I can dunk no more. I don’t want to bring it out. But I had an opportunity. First half I was getting to the rim, I just wasn’t finishing for whatever reason.

“So you got to go up there and finish. Had to get one.”

Irving scored 15 of his 24 points in the fourth quarter, when the Nets poured in 38 points on 60 percent shooting — including 57.1 percent from 3-point range.

LaMarcus Aldridge and Patty Mills made successful returns to San Antonio, where they played for the Spurs. Aldridge posted 16 points and seven assists, while Mills added nine points.

After being mesmerized by Harden’s 12-point, four-assist third quarter, Irving — in just his fifth game this season, and fourth alongside Harden — was prodded by his fellow star to do his thing in the fourth.

“You can get easily caught up by just watching. He’s so great at just getting one-on-one and when he’s feeling it, he makes the game so much easier for everyone else. So I was just trying to get out the way,” Irving said. “Then James kinda yelled at me — not a negative yell — but he yelled at me, ‘Ky! Get the effin ball!’ in the third quarter after he’d scored. I don’t know how many he scored in the third quarter. So I kind of took that personal, and just came out … with an aggressive mindset and just played off the flow of the offense.”

It was actually the Nets’ defense that turned it, before the offense finally got rolling late.

Trailing 74-73 with just over a minute and a half left in the third, the Nets ran off eight unanswered points to get some sort of control.

Bruce Brown came off the bench with harassing defense on Derrick White and a pair of blocks in succession. The second came with just three seconds left in the third quarter, and he raced up-court and was rewarded with a thunderous fast-break dunk that beat the buzzer.

Irving’s bucket to open the fourth capped the run and pushed the lead to seven. His dipsy-do layup, followed by a pull-up 3-pointer, made it 104-90 with 4:37 left to play.

In the end, Irving — who had just nine points through the third quarter — put up 15 in the fourth. He shot 6-for-9 and was a plus-10 in a final period that served as a breakthrough.

“For sure,” Harden said of the point guard. “For sure, it was a breakthrough. He’s capable of doing that, man, at any moment, at any point in the game. And that’s one of the reasons we need him every single game: Because he’s able to do that, especially with everything that’s going on with our team.

“But he’s more than capable of doing things like that whenever he wants. I think he just tries to get us involved a little bit more. But yeah, he’s a special talent.”