MIAMI — This victory was as Pyrrhic as it was painful. 

The Nets won Sunday’s game, 102-101, over the Heat but lost star Kevin Durant in the process. 

Brooklyn lost its star with a minute left in the third quarter, and fell behind by nine points in the fourth quarter before rallying for the come-from-behind victory before a sellout crowd of 19,901 at FTX Arena. 

“You never want to see them go down like that, any player for that matter. Pretty hard collision, but you’ve got to give our group credit for staying with it. I think we were down eight or nine to finish the game and to stay together, pretty impressive,” coach Jacque Vaughn said. “A job well done for all those guys who finished and really sustained through that stretch, [they] showed a lot of resilience and a lot of resolve to stay together.” 

Trailing by a point with 5.5 seconds left, Kyrie Irving missed an ill-advised 30-foot heave. But center Nic Claxton’s offensive rebound and Royce O’Neale go-ahead floater put the Nets in front, and Jimmy Butler’s missed layup with 0.5 seconds left kept them there. 

“I think Nic got the rebound. I mean it was a big-time play, we knew Ky was gonna take the shot, we trust him with that and that’s a great opportunity to crash the glass especially at that time,” O’Neale said. “And Yuta [Watanabe] did a great job keeping the ball alive and I was there, right place, right time. And I got the basket.” 

“I thought Ky was gonna make the shot honestly. But [Watanabe] almost got the rebound, tipped it to [O’Neale], he got the floater and our job wasn’t finished. We still had to come back and get a stop,” Claxton said. “That was big. Royce, he was there. Low man helped without fouling. That was a big-time win on the road.” 

Brooklyn (27-13) has won 18 of 20. The Nets sit a game behind Eastern Conference-leading Boston, and are 1 ½ ahead of third-place Milwaukee. 

Durant was hurt with 1:05 left in the third and checked out a half-minute later. The Nets lost their momentum, falling behind 90-81 on Tyler Herro’s free throws with 9:24 to play. But they righted the ship.