Spencer Dinwiddie’s role for Brooklyn is like a Swiss Army knife.

Now that the Nets are injured and desperate, that knife might be at its most dangerous.

Dinwiddie has been at his best when the Nets were shorthanded in the backcourt, whether the loss was Caris LeVert, Jeremy Lin or D’Angelo Russell. And with the Nets expecting LeVert to miss five weeks and Kyrie Irving out indefinitely, they’ll certainly need him to be at his best now.

“He’s one of our best players. We need him, especially with Caris out, and now, you’ve got Kyrie out,” Kenny Atkinson said as his Nets return home to host the Pacers on Monday. “Without taking it all on his shoulders, he’s really stepped up in the past. Without Caris going forward these next five weeks, we really need him to step up.

“He’s starting to do it. In the beginning of the season, those first five or six games, he was really trying to find his role. This is when Spencer … you can give him the ball and give him that confidence and he plays better.”

If the self-assured Dinwiddie has ever suffered a crisis of confidence, he must have hid it with Denzel Washington-level acting.

Dinwiddie enters Monday’s matchup with Indiana averaging 22.8 points in his past five games, with a plus-24 that’s second-best on the team. But that production spike is about raising his usage rate, not his self-assurance.

“No, I don’t ever lack confidence, that’s not a thing,” Dinwiddie said. “I understand what we’ve scripted here. Obviously Kyrie is going to be in MVP contention, we want Caris to be a secondary All-Star, so my role is to get in where I fit in. That’s just what it is.

“Sometimes it’s going to look like a defensive player. Sometimes it’s going to look like an offensive player. Sometimes it’s going to be a spot-up shooter. Sometimes it’s going to be something else — a driver or a facilitator or whatever it is. Obviously that’s not easy to have to wear all those hats and move around and shift around. But that is my role.

“When people ask me why is this game eight assists and one turnover, and why is this game 30 points and two assists, that’s what they asked me to do today. I just do what I’m told, you feel me? If they want me to score 30 every game, I’d go out there and do it. I don’t feel like nobody one-on-one can guard me, so … whatever they ask is what I try to do.”

With Irving sidelined Saturday in Chicago, Dinwiddie stepped up with a team-high 24 points. And like a boxer working the body to set up the knockout, or a running back tiring out tacklers, he poured in career-high 20 points in the fourth quarter.

“He’s like a tailback. You just keep pitching it to him, and he just keeps going around end and he keeps going,” Atkinson said. “He’s so fast. He’s got to be one of the fastest guys in the league. He was outstanding.

“He got to the free-throw line a ton of times, that’s his game. They were trying to send two to him, so he did a good job beating those two, but also getting the ball out. … He really played a great game. Then we put him on Zach LaVine as our stopper. Great game by Spence.”

Dinwiddie was self-aware enough to play through his fifth foul — picked up with 5:04 left — and stay aggressive despite knowing a charge would end his night. He had a layup and went 12 of 13 from the line all in those final five minutes.

The Nets are going to need performances like that from Dinwiddie going forward, either best case playing alongside Irving, or worst case in lieu of him.