SAN ANTONIO – They kept the illusion alive right to the final quarter of the season, kept chasing fool’s gold until it lured them at last into a brick wall disguised as an army of white uniforms. The Nets allowed everyone to believe they were championship caliber, constructed of championship timber, fueled by a champion’s heart. Starting with themselves.

What we know now – what they have to know now – is this: They weren’t even close.

Champions? Champions don’t allow themselves to be bulldozed by a 19-0 run when all that was at stake was a chance to keep their season alive and to stave off a nation of skeptics questioning their very credentials as NBA Finalists. Champions don’t see their second-best player wander off to Planet Starks when they need him most. Champions don’t bleed to death after one terrible counterpunch.

This 88-77 Spurs victory doesn’t diminish everything that came before; and it doesn’t erase the Nets’ magnificent march through April and May, when they grabbed the Eastern Conference by the throat and allowed a few stubborn members of the faithful to buy into their mirage of a miracle; and it doesn’t alter the legacy of Jason Kidd one bit, even if last night turns out to be the final act of that two-year passion play.

But it does reinforce this hard truth: The Nets are a nice team. They are a worthy foil. But they are not a championship team.

“There are no moral victories, man,” Kenyon Martin whispered when it was over, with a white towel wrapped around his head and a symbolic white flag flapping above it, after a 3-for-23 shooting catastrophe that must have sent Keith Van Horn into an endless spasm of giggles somewhere in Salt Lake City. “There’s no such thing as a moral victory in this league. I let my team down. Bottom line. I let everyone down.”

There was no getting around that, or how completely the lot of them contributed to the fourth-quarter meltdown that turned a hopeful 72-63 lead into 82-72 despair.

How Richard Jefferson fell asleep with the Nets still guarding an eight-point lead, allowing Manu Ginobili to make the steal that everyone tagged as the turning point of the whole game.

How Byron Scott kept Kerry Kittles chained to the bench until it was far too late, until the lead was long gone, even though Kittles was one of the few Nets who embraced the pressure of this game, rather than be terrified by it. How even Kidd couldn’t find the hot hand when his team so desperately needed it.

“Maybe if we’d gotten one basket,” Kidd mused. “Maybe if we’d gotten one stop. Maybe that would have made the difference . . . ”

His voice trailed off and his expression remained blank. If this series was an eye-opener for Nets fans, it had to be a seriously sobering shot for Kidd, too, who’d completely bought into what the Nets thought they’d become, who saw Jefferson and Martin blossom during these playoffs, who’d begun to believe that there might be no need to go searching for sidekicks with these two already in place.

Now, you wonder, and you wonder if he wonders. How can you not? How can he not? Jefferson’s immaturity was exposed on the Ginobili steal, something that visibly annoyed Kidd at the time and was still on his mind later on. And Martin, who’d defiantly vowed earlier in the day, “I never have two awful games back-to-back” may actually have strung the two worst games of his life back-to-back.

“He just couldn’t make a basket,” Scott said ruefully. “It just wasn’t his night.”

So it wouldn’t be the Nets night either, or their year. Armed with an opportunity, armored with the belief that they were a team woven with championship fiber, they folded into the fetal position all about the SBC Center and let the Spurs prove just how delusional they’d been. Right to the end, they clung to the mirage.

Until, at last, it vanished. And there was nothing left to hold on to.

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RUN AND DONE

Spurs sealed Nets fate when they went on 19-0 run in fourth quarter. Here’s how it happened:

8:55 Nets lead 72-63 after a Rodney Rogers three pointer.

8:38 Spur’s Malik rose hits 2 free-throws, 72-65

8:22 Rodney Rogers layup blocked by Tim Duncan.

8:07 72-65 Emanuel Ginobili misses 25 ft jump shot

7:58 Jason Kidd misses jumper.

7:41 Spur’s Malik Rose makes layup, 72-67.

7:26 Kenyon Martin misses jumper.

7:11 Stephen Jackson makes 24-ft 3-pointer, 72-70.

6:50 Kenyon Martin 7 ft-jumper blocked by Duncan.

6:33 Jackson makes 3-pojnter, Spurs lead 72-73

6:16 Jason Kidd misses 13 ft Jumper.

6:05 Duncan jumper blocked by Mutombo

6:01 72-75 David Robinson hits layup, 75-72

5:43 Lucious Harris misses 2 Free Throws.

5:26 Speedy Claxton makes 15 ft Jumper, 77-72

5:11 Martin misses jumper.

4:48 Jackson makes 25 ft Jumper, 80-72

4:33 Aaron Williams misses 18 ft Jumper.

4:20 Kerry Kittles 22 ft Jumper blocked by Tim Duncan.

3:59 Jackson misses 3-pointer

3:45 Claxton hits jumper, 82-72

3:20 Kidd hits from 18 feet to end 19-0 run, 82-74