Nets use Mikal Bridges to limit 76ers’ James Harden in Game 2 loss

PHILADELPHIA — Coming back to Brooklyn down 2-0 in their first-round series against the 76ers, the Nets will be looking for any silver lining.

And one is the way they’ve defended James Harden.

After giving Harden trouble driving in Game 1, they smothered the former MVP altogether in Game 2.

Starting Mikal Bridges against him, the Nets held him to just eight points and seven assists on 3-for-13 shooting with five turnovers.

“Just not trying to let him score. Just trying to keep him in front of me and just guard,” Bridges shrugged.

“I think the matchup of putting [Bridges] on [Harden] had its benefits, for sure,” Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn said. “Look at [Harden’s] stats.”

“And the other piece was [Dorian Finney-Smith] was able to be around the rim with P.J. Tucker, so he didn’t have the impact. So we can’t stop the run, the pass, the special teams, all of it. We’re trying though. So our group did a great job of adjusting they felt us we’ll make some more adjustments. And I think we’d be in good shape.”

Finney-Smith held Tucker scoreless.

But Tyrese Maxey was the beneficiary in the Nets’ rotations, going off for a game-high 33 in a pick-your-poison scenario.

“That’s not a poison you wanna pick: Maxey teeing off open 3 from the corner,” said Cam Johnson, who scored a playoff career-high 28 points. “And so like I said, we’ll go back, look at what we’re doing and adjust. I mean, Harden was on the wrong side of that one today. Eight points, and that’s what we wanna do, but in games like this, that 33 from Maxey on efficiency is pretty killer.”