Lopez, improved defense continue Nets’ strong finish

Tragically bad for the first half of the season, the Nets have been solid during the second.

After mustering just a single win in January and February combined, they’ve played near-.500 basketball since.

The Nets may be bound to stay in the NBA cellar, but they’ve been outworking and beating teams headed to the playoffs. The latest was Sunday’s 91-82 defensive-minded victory over the Hawks in front of 15,040 at Barclays Center.

Brook Lopez had 29 points, five assists and five blocks. And despite Atlanta star Paul Millsap’s return, the Nets (18-59) allowed their lowest point total of the season and held the Hawks to 37.5 percent shooting. They improved to 9-10 since March 1 with their best defensive effort of the year, with 11 steals and seven blocks.

“It’s definitely up there. The great thing is we keep improving. Regardless of how sharp we are, we always play with energy,” Lopez said. “That’s the most important thing. When you do that consistently, it makes up for a lot of things.

“Obviously winning is different. Winning feels completely different. You’ve got to give the team credit, because the one thing we didn’t do is quit. There was never any quit in the team.”

There certainly wasn’t any Sunday. Lopez and Jeremy Lin saw to that.

“Jeremy and Brook really set the tone,’’ Nets coach Kenny Atkinson said.

Lin had 15 points, six assists and six rebounds to outplay Dennis Schroder (7-of-20 shooting, five turnovers) and break his recent malaise. And Lopez was a force on both ends.

“We were just trying to be aggressive and we got hot. On the back end of a back-to-back that’s just setting that tone,” Lin said. “[I] just felt like we were in control of the game throughout, and — even though we were the ones scoring points — our whole starting five defensively came out and did a great job.”

Lopez came in 90 points shy of becoming the Nets’ alltime leading scorer. He looked like he was on a mission to get the record before he left the building.

At one point he scored 15 straight Brooklyn points to propel them to a 29-20 lead late in the first quarter, ending the period with 18 while Lin had eight.

The Nets still led 70-61 after three and pushed the lead to 78-63 on Trevor Booker’s 3-pointer early in the fourth.

The Nets saw that cushion slashed to just 83-80 on a three-point play by Atlanta wing Tim Hardaway Jr. (14 points, six boards), a potential restricted free-agent target this summer. But Lopez found Spencer Dinwddie for a huge corner 3 to double the lead and give the Nets some breathing room with 2:34 remaining.

“Our defense is improving in general,” Atkinson said. “It’s a sign of us getting better defensively and we just did a good job overall”