Atkinson’s young crew not making any excuses

Both publicly and privately, the Nets have said their first playoff appearance in four years will be a learning experience, a mostly young and green roster getting some hard-earned lessons.

But facing elimination in Tuesday’s first-round Game 5 in Philadelphia, they aren’t going to use inexperience as an alibi. Right now the Nets aren’t focused on planning for next season but extending this one. And that means not managing expectations or making excuses.

“We’d like to make that excuse, obviously this is a learning experience. For a lot of us, this is our first time playing big minutes in the playoffs,” Spencer Dinwiddie said. “But we were right there [in Game 4]. We feel like we should’ve won.

“We weren’t saying this was a learning experience when we won Game 1. So we can’t fall back on that now. We need to try to pull off something incredible.”

After rolling to an easy road win in Game 1, the Nets got routed in Games 2 and 3. Then they got their hearts broken in testy Game 4 loss that saw yet another Joel Embiid flagrant, Jared Dudley and Jimmy Butler ejected and GM Sean Marks suspended and fined for going into the officials’ locker room. Dudley was also fined Sunday.

Now Marks will be suspended for their do-or-die game Tuesday in Philadelphia, his Nets facing elimination with tall odds stacked against them. But they did enough in Game 4 to give them hope of getting a win in Game 5.

“Definitely so. We came out here we played our hardest, and I know we came up short but there’s a lot of things we can improve on,” Jarrett Allen said. “There’s a lot of mistakes we made out there, a lot of little mistakes, and if we fix those, I think we can take it.”

The Nets made a host of mistakes late, taking a 101-94 lead with 5:20 left only to let the Sixers close the game on an 18-7 run.

“We got a little out of sorts had a few turnovers,” coach Kenny Atkinson said.

Five turnovers to be exact, along with 3-of-8 shooting as they were undone by the 76ers’ length and their own inexperience.

“It was a little bit of both,” Allen said. “... We need to be better in the end of the games, especially in the playoffs when we know it’s going to be more difficult than the regular season.”

The NBA Last Two Minute Report revealed Dinwiddie got away with discontinuing his dribble with 1:45 left, and Tobias Harris wrapped his arm around Allen with 12 seconds left to restrict his movement which should have been called a foul.

Ed Davis’ status is uncertain after he missed Game 4 with a sore left ankle. He played through a sore right ankle in Game 1 when he had 12 points, 16 rebounds and held Embiid to just 1-of-8 shooting. He logged just 15:41 combined in Games 2 and 3, with his physical play sorely missed.