The Nets endured two hard fouls that sent Kevin Durant and Bruce Brown tumbling to the ground, but the gut-punch loss and missed opportunity for a statement win hurt most.

Durant missed game-winning shots at the end of regulation and the end of overtime on Thursday night as the Nets could not recover from blowing a nine-point lead in the final three minutes of the fourth quarter and lost 120-119 to the Milwaukee Bucks at Barclays Center. Just like that, Durant’s 26 points and 11 assists, Kyrie Irving’s 25 points and respect-craving Bruce Brown’s 23 points went for naught.

“We’ve got to be better,” Brown said. “We’ve got to win this game.”

Durant sank three free throws for a 119-118 lead after his legs were taken out attempting a corner 3-pointer with 8.7 seconds remaining in overtime. He stayed on the floor for a while as the sellout crowd held its collective breath, then rose to his feet as exhales turned into an “M-V-P” chant.

Peeved that the call wasn’t reviewed for a possible “reckless” flagrant, Durant said, “I’m hurt. That’s two games in a row a player walked up underneath me when I’m trying to make a basketball play. So, my ankle is hurt.” Not hurt enough to miss a game, Durant later clarified.

But when it comets to the MVP chants, two-time MVP and defending NBA champion Giannis Antetokounmpo must have thought the crowd was calling for him. He bull-rushed down the floor and drew a foul, shrugging off a career’s worth of struggles at the line to knock down a pair and finish off a 44-point performance.

The lead changed hands three times and the score was tied twice in the fourth quarter of the final regular-season rematch of last season’s thrilling seven-game playoff series.

“It’s more accountability on our end to finish out regulation with more resolve,” Irving said.

It seemed the Nets were in total command with a nine-point lead and three minutes left in regulation after the dust settled on a frenzied span that turned heated when Brown tracked down an errant pass and looked at an empty half of the court ahead. Brown slowed down as if preparing for an emphatic dunk, which allowed a hustling Khris Middleton to catch up and hammer the airborne Brown on the wrist.

“It’s a hard foul on an open dunk,” Brown said. “I mean, I wouldn’t do it. But I don’t care. It’s fine.”

Most of the 17,917 fans rained boos on Middleton, who was assessed a flagrant-2 foul upon replay review and ejected from the game by rule, leaving Antetokounmpo without his best wingman. Not that Durant fully had his partner in crunch time, either, since Irving was 0-for-3 with zero points and one turnover in the final four minutes of regulation and overtime.

Brown began the day saying he felt it was “disrespectful” of the Bucks to essentially give him uncontested perimeter looks in the playoffs last year and provided his proof of improvement by reaching 20 points for the third time this season. He sank both his free throws off the flagrant and Durant continued the momentum surge with an alley-oop dunk to increase the lead to 108-99.

But it all evaporated quickly, capped by Antetokounmpo knocking down a 3-pointer to tie the score at 110-110 with 18 seconds remaining to send the game to overtime. The Nets slipped into a three-way tie for the No. 8 seed and only one of those teams (Hawks, Hornets) will get the play-in advantage of only having to win one of two games to advance to the first round.

“We gave up some timely offensive rebounds at the end of the game that cost us,” coach Steve Nash said. “You can hone in on one specific thing, but I think it’s bigger than that. We’re a group that’s trying to find each other and get a rhythm for how we want to play, especially down the stretch of close games. It’s training-camp stuff.”

The Bucks shot 28-of-34 at the free-throw line compared to the Nets’ 11-of-16. Brown said the 17-point and 18-attempt disparity impacted the game “a lot,” but declined to go any further because he is “not taking that fine” for criticizing officials.