With February behind them, the Nets will move into the final two months of the season with everything to play for.

Through 58 games, the Nets’ record stands at 34-24, with a shot at a top four seed in the Eastern Conference come playoff time. But the Nets have a chance to not only do that, but to surpass the crosstown rival Knicks for the Atlantic Division crown.

In fact, not only do they have a chance to move ahead of the Knicks, but you could argue that the Nets, who currently sit 1.5 games behind the Knicks for the division lead, will have the edge over the final two months of the season as they try to win a division title in their first year in Brooklyn.

Why? Well, let’s look at the remaining schedules for both teams.

After Tuesday’s win in New Orleans, the Nets have 24 games remaining, while the Knicks, who survived an explosion from Stephen Curry last night at the Garden, have 28. The Knicks have an advantage in this regard, in that they could go ahead by as many as four games if they manage to win all four of their games in hand.

The problem for the Knicks, however, is the difficult schedule they have in front of them, and particularly in comparison to the Nets, something that I spent some time crunching numbers on over the past couple days.

Here’s what the Nets schedule looks like over the final 24 games (records and percentages through Wednesday night’s games):

— Nine games in Brooklyn, compared to 15 on the road.

— Nine games against teams over .500, compared to 15 against teams below .500

— An opponent’s winning percentage of 44.7 percent overall, including 39.8 percent at home and 47.6 on the road.

And here’s what the Knicks schedule looks like over the final 28 games:

— 12 games at the Garden, compared to 16 on the road.

— 16 games against teams over .500, compared to 12 against teams below .500.

— An opponent’s winning percentage of 50.8 percent overall, including 51.4 percent at home and 50.3 on the road.

Obviously the Nets have to play over 60 percent of their remaining games on the road, which is difficult, but greatly benefit from the fact that they play so many non-playoff teams over the final two months of the year. That’s particularly the case at home, where the Nets play only two teams – Atlanta and Chicago – that are currently over .500, and only three, including Dallas, that are even within 10 games of the .500 mark.

And while the Nets are set to play plenty of road games, including their grueling two-week road trip in the second half of March, they still play more teams that are under .500 (eight) than over (seven) away from home.

The Knicks, on the other hand, are about to embark on a brutal final two months. They play 17 of their final 28 games against teams at or over .500, including two games against both Miami and Oklahoma City, as well as games at home against Memphis and at the Clippers.

Like the Nets, the Knicks also have a very tough West Coast trip, and arguably an even tougher one, with games at Golden State, Denver, Portland, the Clippers and Utah (and which is preceded by games at home against Oklahoma City and Utah).

The other thing working in the Nets’ favor is the fact that they hold nearly all of the tiebreakers over the Knicks in the race for the division title. Any combination of two between Nets wins and Knicks losses in the division would mean the Nets would be guaranteed of owning the tiebreaker over the Knicks due to a better division record.

So how will this play out? Well, let’s be conservative, given their weak schedule, and say the Nets go 12-12 over these final 24 games, which would leave them with a 46-36 record. That means, in order to finish ahead of them, that the Knicks would have to go 13-15 over their final 28 games, which obviously would be well within reason.

But if the Nets can stay on the same pace they are at right now and reach 48 wins – meaning they go 14-10 over their final 24 games – that would mean the Knicks would have to go at least 15-13 down the stretch to stay ahead of them and claim the division title.

And if the Nets can do any better than that 14-10 record? Well, that would really put pressure on the Knicks to perform well against an extremely difficult closing schedule.

The stretch that very well may decide the division for both teams will be the eight game, 17 day road trip the Nets will embark upon over the final two weeks of March when the circus comes to Barclays Center.

If the Nets can just stay close to .500 over the course of that trip – go, say, 3-5 or 4-4 against a schedule that includes five below .500 teams – that would put them in a solid position to make a run at finishing with the minimum 13 or 14 wins they’ll need during this final two month stretch to force the Knicks to do more than muddle through their difficult closing schedule.

The race for the Atlantic Division is on, and the Nets – despite being behind at the moment – have put themselves in position to make a run at raising a banner in their first season in Brooklyn.

tbontemps@nypost.com