CHARLOTTE, N.C. — After blowing late leads in their first two games, the Nets finally earned their way into the win column Monday. And they used a wide open small-ball attack to do it, sprinting past the Hornets, 133-121, before 14,491 at Spectrum Center.

Coach Jacque Vaughn had been pleading with his players to embrace their identity as a fast-break team, and they did. The Nets built a 21-point lead with their transition game and held on.

“Everybody here wants to win,” Ben Simmons said. “There’s an expectation to win, so coming to Charlotte, that was the priority, and everyone was on the same page.”

Playing without injured Nic Claxton and Cam Johnson, and losing Spencer Dinwiddie in the first half, the Nets (1-2) went with a five-out lineup that the Hornets couldn’t stop or even slow.

They scored 28 fast-break points.

“That got us a good rhythm, a good lead, good momentum to start the game off,” Cam Thomas said. “We usually start slow, so starting off fast was a good thing. Running fast, getting a lot of transition 3s up. Also if we run fast, we can get mismatches. We can get bigs on guards and do our iso game. … Fast-breaking opens up a lot of things. So we’ve just got to keep doing it and keep building on it.”

Thomas poured in a game-high 33 points, and Mikal Bridges added 24. Neither of those are a surprise anymore.

But Dorian Finney-Smith started as a small-ball center and had 19 points and seven rebounds, helping a Nets team that was terrible on the boards last season to actually outrebound Charlotte, 46-39.

And Finney-Smith gave the Nets four shooters around Simmons, spacing the floor for Simmons to aggressively attack the paint.

Simmons flirting with a triple-double, finishing with 11 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists.

Simmons sparked a white-hot start, the Nets racing out of the blocks — racing being the operative word.

From his long touchdown pass to Dinwiddie on the second possession, the Nets punished Charlotte in transition.

The Nets took a quick 9-2 lead, with seven points coming on the fast break.

Finney-Smith found Royce O’Neale for a 3 that padded the cushion to 39-18 with 32.5 seconds left in the first quarter.

It was 42-23 after one, the Nets’ second-highest scoring opening quarter since the start of last season.

They outscored Charlotte, 17-2, on the fast break in that first stanza and largely held the Hornets at arm’s length the rest of the evening.

“It shows we can get a lot of shots. And get good shots,” Simmons said. “That’s gonna be priority of mine, just get out and run and push the ball and push the pace and find my guys.”

The lead never got tighter than seven the rest of the way.

It was a breakthrough night for Bridges, who struggled throughout the preseason and the first two games.

But looking more relaxed, he shot 10 of 13 with seven boards, four assists and finished a plus-10.

“I just had to let it breathe, let the game come to me and still be aggressive about moments when I’m out there but just let it come,” Bridges said. “And just finding joy. I was too on myself on being this position and wanting to win so bad. … I was just so all [on] myself trying to do this, do this. … I was getting frustrated on myself and let my spirit down and not having fun out there, and just knew I had to come in, just let it go. Just go play. Play free and have fun.”

It was a conversation with his mother that helped put Bridges more at ease.

“I play the game and I have fun playing. And this past couple games just feel like it’s just all myself a little too much about that situation,” Bridges said. “My mom talked to me. That’s what it is.”