It’s hard to imagine worse Monday blues for the Nets. 

Hours after they were told there’d be no exceptions made for Kyrie Irving, they lost Steve Nash to health and safety protocols. Then they suffered a 133-97 loss to Toronto before 17,112 at Barclays Center that was doubly damaging. 

Eighth-place Brooklyn (32-30) dropped a must-win game, losing vital ground to the Raptors and falling even deeper behind them in the play-in standings. The Nets trail seventh-place Toronto by two full games with 20 to play, and the return leg of this home-and-home looming Tuesday at Scotiabank Arena. 

“Yeah, we’re two games behind the seventh spot. So yeah, it’s huge,” Bruce Brown admitted. “We’ve got to get this win in Toronto, especially since they came in here and did what they wanted in our gym. That’s unacceptable, so we’ve got to go out there and take it to them.” 

The Nets got it taken to them on Monday. 

After losing Nash just moments before pregame warm-ups, they came out and looked in abysmal disarray. 

The Nets got torched by Toronto’s Scottie Barnes, who had 28 points on 12 of 14 shooting from the floor and 16 rebounds, both game-highs. Despite holding Pascal Siakam to just eight points on 2 of 14 shooting, they still got blown out, such was their sorry play in almost every other aspect. 

The Nets shot just 38.4 percent overall and committed 23 turnovers to hand the Raptors 31 points. LaMarcus Aldridge had just 15 points, with Brown and Cam Thomas adding 14 in a horrid offensive night. 

Brooklyn trailed by as much as 39, on a Yuta Watanabe 3-pointer for a 129-90 Toronto lead with 3:37 to play. 

The Nets fell 3 ¹/₂ games behind the idle sixth-place Boston Celtics and the final guaranteed playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. But at this point, the Nets — losers of 14 of 17 — need to be more concerned with Tuesday’s quick turnaround against these same Raptors. 

“[That’s] very useful,” said assistant Jacque Vaughn, who will act as head coach until Nash returns. “Hopefully our guys are ready for that and looking forward to going up to Toronto and addressing the fact that we could have played better tonight and we will play better [Tuesday].” 

The Nets won’t have any of their new Big 3 of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving or Ben Simmons for Tuesday’s return leg of this back-to-back, and facing the prospect of falling three games back with 19 to play is daunting. 

“I mean for us right now every game is important. We know how that goes,” James Johnson said. “We need to get them all, and that’s the bottom line. I feel like once we get there I like our chances versus everybody.”