DETROIT — They say familiarity breeds contempt.

In the Nets’ case, it’s breeding cohesion.

“Yeah, we just figured out, we’re understanding the way we want to play,” Kevin Durant said. “That’s always the good part about finding your identity in the league is that now you can start relaxing a bit going into games, preparing. It’s cool because you know your role, you understand exactly how we want to play.

“So everybody’s coming in more relaxed, but also with a sense of urgency knowing this is what we do, this is the type of team we are. We’re building that every day. We talk about just stacking them up, keep stacking these days and I think everything matters. So we add another game to the pot.”

The pot that was a horrible hodgepodge to start the season is coming together.

A team that was just 2-5 before coach Steve Nash was fired has gone 16-5 for his replacement, Jacque Vaughn. And since Vaughn’s elevation to the top job, the Nets’ improvement has been clear and rapid.

They will enter the final contest of  a four-game road trip Sunday at Detroit having won a season-high five straight, and nine of their last 10.

Even with the starting lineup essentially etched in stone (three spots are set, with Ben Simmons, Royce O’Neale and Joe Harris rotating though the other two), Vaughn has had to cycle through rotations to find the right combinations. And the players have to get used to that and to each other.

With the Nets trailing by 14 in the second quarter Friday in what became a come-from-behind win at Toronto, Vaughn tried a five-man unit he’d never used. The gamble worked.

“We’re just trying to find guys who were ready to compete and play hard and we finished the half only down 10,” Vaughn said. “It’s tough to find the right combinations; that’s going to be the equation.

“Seth [Curry] doesn’t play as much, Cam [Thomas] didn’t play as much, we rode TJ [Warren] a little bit. Went small at the end, took Ben out, Yuta [Watanabe] hits the corner 3. So it’s definitely a puzzle I don’t mind messing around with throughout the course of the game, great challenge. But guys are always ready to play and that’s what we want to get to: your number’s called, be ready to play.”

The Nets entered the weekend with the second-most wins (16) and fifth-best net rating (4.4) in the league since Vaughn took over on Nov. 1.

That improved cohesion has been apparent on both ends of the court. They executed offensively down the stretch Friday against the Raptors, shooting 70 percent in the fourth quarter. Durant and Kyrie Irving didn’t even need to burn their last timeout to get great looks in the endgame.

“That part of the game they really managed,” Vaughn said. “We had one time out to ride the last minute or so, we didn’t call time three or four possessions where we let the guys get in position and play. So that poise I love about it.

“Guys are getting used to playing with each other, their spacing. Yuta was in the right spot, Royce was lifted in the right spot, knowing how K’s going to react to different situations, the double-team. TJ gets a dunk because he flashed it to the right spot on the floor. So slowly but surely.”

On the other end, it’s plain to the naked eye that the Nets are helping the helper, communicating better and using more selfless rotations.

“The best teams that have won big in our league or won the championships have put defense first,” Irving said. “Establishing an identity, it sounds good with words, but we’ve got to have that game-to-game discipline where we have a good foundation of what our defensive principles are and then we go out and execute them.”

Added Durant: “For the most part, we know the type of brand we want to play defensively. We’re understanding we [must] get better at the rebounding piece, stuff we’ve been struggling with, that we get better with our switches. So yeah, defensively we were hanging our hat on that.”