Undermanned Nets dominated by Suns in Kevin Durant’s return

Kevin Durant drove on Cam Thomas, which is about as hopeless a scenario as the Nets could envision.

Durant, all limbs and force and grace, bullied his way into the lane during the third quarter and rose as Thomas continued reaching in.

Durant easily flipped in a bucket, heard the whistle signaling a foul and glared not at Thomas but at fans behind the basket.

The one-time (and short-time) Nets superstar brought his right hand up and extended his index finger and thumb about an inch apart from each other: the universal symbol for too small.

On this night, the Nets indeed had brought the JV to a varsity game.

In Durant’s return to Brooklyn, his Suns dominated the Nets — as much in style of play as the final score — in a 136-120 win at Barclays Center over a Jacque Vaughn group that was severely undermanned, a word we mean literally.

The Nets (19-28) snapped a brief two-game win streak, have not won three in a row since early December and were overmatched in Durant’s return to Brooklyn.

This one, against the superstar who followed Kyrie Irving out of town last year, must have hurt a bit more than most. It had to hurt the poor wings who had to guard Jusuf Nurkic the most.

Without Ben Simmons, Dorian Finney-Smith and Day’Ron Sharpe, the Nets were forced to put comparative ants on the Suns’ 7-footer whenever Nic Claxton was off the court.

Even when Claxton was on the court, a screen often would switch him onto a guard.

“He’s 7-foot, 280 [pounds],” said Mikal Bridges, whose 21 points and 6-of-12 from deep kept the Nets afloat. “It’s going to be tough for anybody who’s smaller to guard him.”

Nurkic dominated the game, finishing with 28 points on 11-of-15 shooting, so many back-ins that met no resistance.

The Bosnian big man added 11 rebounds, six assists and two blocks, helping Phoenix outrebound the Nets, 42-27.

“You don’t want to double-team Jusuf Nurkic in order to give up shots to Eric Gordon and [Bradley] Beal and [Devin] Booker and Durant,” Vaughn said after his Nets allowed the Suns to shoot 62 percent from the field. “That’s just not smart basketball.”

Simmons, who sat for nearly three months before returning Monday, was on the bench one game later with a left knee contusion.

Finney-Smith missed a second straight game with an ankle sprain and Sharpe remains out with a knee injury.

So it was wings such as Cam Johnson, Royce O’Neale and Spencer Dinwiddie who received the unfortunate matchup, and they were thrown around.

A team with Durant (33 points), Booker (22 points) and Beal (12 points) was somehow carried by a veteran center who has never been an All-Star.

The Nets hung around in the first half and entered the break down just three.

They were being badly outrebounded but were careful offensively, turning the ball over just twice in the half and shooting 51.1 percent from the field in the early going.

They were not going to outmuscle Nurkic, Durant & Co., but they were going to try to outshoot and outhustle them, grabbing 11 steals in total.

The plan unraveled in the third quarter, when a 75-75 tie at 7:31 became the last time the Nets could feel good about themselves.

The Suns ripped off a 24-6 run on the back of 10 points from Durant, and the game never again became competitive.

Durant seemed to especially enjoy his array of daggers and occasionally pointing out the size disparity.

“This crowd knows, you talk to me I’ll talk back,” said Durant, who forced his way out after Irving did the same, their union in Brooklyn a failure. “They get a kick out of it, it’s something they’re going to always remember. And it gets me hype, too, in the game as well, if I hit a shot I can talk a little s–t on the way back.”

Durant shot 10-of-16 and grabbed five rebounds while dishing eight assists, helping the Suns ice the game late.

Thomas’ clutch fourth quarter, in which he scored eight of his team-high 25 points, kept the final score respectable, but the Nets never cut the deficit to single-digits in the fourth.

The Nets put six players in double-figures, but no amount of firepower would have worked against a team with a tank.

“We missed some people tonight,” Vaughn said.

Wednesday was about the pieces the Nets no longer have. Durant of course, but also anyone who could guard a load of a center.