Good Friday turned out to be great for the Nets with their playoff-clinching 101-84 rout of the Magic before 18,177 at Barclays Center. 

Mikal Bridges poured in a game-high 22 points, Cam Johnson scored 18, Spencer Dinwiddie handed out 14 assists and Nic Claxton finished with 14 points and 15 rebounds. 

Bridges, Johnson and Dinwiddie came to the Nets in the trades of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving that both kicked off their rebuilding and had many doubting they could reach the playoffs. 

“It feels really good, just everything we’ve been through, people counted us out. But we started together and this means a lot,” Royce O’Neale said. 

“Man, it’s dope, it’s great,” Bridges said. “It was tough, especially in the beginning. A lot of people new and trying to learn concepts and figure out our rotation and what to do out there on the court together. So it was definitely tough for a while, but finally clicking and finally figuring out what we can do out there was dope man. Just happy to be in this position.” 

The Nets (45-36) have rebounded from a season-worst, five-game skid by winning six of their last eight.

And they topped their victory total from last season with a game to play. 

“I think I’ll continue to use the no excuses. I mentioned to that group that we just persevered and we somehow found a way to figure things out, but I was extremely proud of them, and we still have some work to do. We still have some games to play, so I’m looking forward to that,” head coach Jacque Vaughn said. 

“This group just endured. We chose to be courageous over comfort, many times. That’s hard to do in this league and try to win in this league on a nightly basis. This group, I tried not to give them chances to have excuses, which hopefully they were able to grab onto. … We tried to figure out a way and figure out how we’re gonna get it done, and we ended up sticking together.” 

The Nets, who used a 31-16 second quarter to pull away, led by as many as 24 points. 

They knew they’d clinched when the announcers, during the fourth quarter, reported the Heat’s loss to the Wizards. But some knew beforehand. 

“Listen bruh I knew the score of the Heat game. It was right there,” Dinwiddie said. “I don’t know if you noticed when they got up about 15, 17 with three minutes to go my level of intensity dropped a little bit. That’s why JV was mad at me. I was like ‘Bruh, smile dude. You’re a nice guy.’ ”