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As last month’s trade deadline drew closer by the day, so, too, did Nic Claxton’s angst. He’d heard all the talk, and the talk was he was getting dealt.

And when the Nets acquired former All-Star center Andre Drummond to play the same position, Claxton assumed his Brooklyn days were done.

Turns out he couldn’t have been more wrong. And in the weeks since those rumors dissipated, the young center has turned his season around. In stepping into the minutes left by the absence of injured veteran LaMarcus Aldridge, Claxton has gotten back to the level of basketball he’d teased at times a year ago, playing the kind of game that had other teams so interested in him in the first place.