The Pelicans entered Wednesday’s game against the Nets with the worst record in the NBA. The Nets left with the worst losing skid in the league.

That’s just how badly Brooklyn is playing right now.

The Nets blew a 12-point lead — and an eight-point fourth-quarter cushion — to fall 116-113 before a crowd of 16,201 at the Smoothie King Center.

After playing well last month, the Nets (11-27) have struggled since the calendar flipped. Brooklyn has lost an NBA-worst five straight, and eight of their past nine.

With the Nets up by 12 in the first quarter and 97-89 in the fourth, they still had a 110-107 edge with 1:05 to play following an Egor Dëmin 3-pointer.

But Brooklyn allowed seven unanswered points to lose the game.

And fittingly the play that broke their backs was conceding an offensive rebound and go-ahead putback. That was the story of their sorry night.

Brooklyn got outrebounded by 10, and outscored 33-16 on second-chance points.

That’s the most they’ve conceded all season, none more galling than Saddiq Bey beating them for an offensive rebound and go-ahead putback dunk to make it 112-110 with 21 seconds left in regulation.

They couldn’t force overtime.

“Got to give [the Pelicans] credit, because they played harder than us, they were more physical, and they fought those boards and they beat us,” Nets coach Jordi Fernàndez said. “On my end I’m extremely disappointed, because I keep telling our guys over and over again how important defensive rebounding is.

“In a game like today, you don’t rebound, you lose. … We didn’t do our job. And we’ve got to decide what we want to do, and be responsible for what our job is.”

The Nets weren’t doing their job on the glass to start the season — on pace for the worst rebounding team in history — and after making brief improvements, have backslid again.

Dëmin (17 points, five assists) and Drake Powell (16 points and five boards) started together for the first time, and gave the Nets a duo of rookie 15-point scorers for the first time since 2022.

It was Dëmin that put them ahead with a long 3-pointer with 1:28 left.

But they coughed up a Saddiq Bey 3-pointer to knot it. And after Demin harassed Trey Murphy III (game-high 34 points) into a rare miss, the Nets let Bey beat them for an offensive rebound and deflating dunk with 21.1 seconds to play.

After the Nets got a clean look but Michael Porter Jr. (team-high 20 points) missed a corner 3, they trailed by three with no timeouts and botched a last-ditch play.

They nearly turned it over and Porter missed a 34-foot heave.

“They had 33 points off second chance points. We cut that in half, we win the game by 10-plus points. Definitely down the stretch, the last two minutes, they got all the ones they needed — second-chance points, 50-50 balls — and they capitalized off of it,” said Day’Ron Sharpe, who had 15 points and a team-high nine boards.

“We had a good December, and in January everything’s going the opposite way right now when it comes to defense and rebounding. We just got to find a way to regroup, and gather ourselves and come together and get back on the same page that we were in December.”

If not, it sounds like rotation spots could be on the line.

“I know our guys care about doing the right things. The problem is, right now our focus and our intentions are not there. And that’s something that I’ve got to help them better. And there’s different ways you can do it, obviously,” said Fernàndez. “So I’m going to try to do my best to find 10 guys in the rotation that care about rebounding, that care about ball pressure, that care about doing the right things.”

Zion Williamson had 25 for New Orleans.