Entering this season, the Nets’ fifth in Brooklyn, the game the Nets played Sunday against the Houston Rockets could have been viewed as an important milepost on the schedule.

It would be the Nets’ 40th game, just about the midway point of the season. The first-year general manager, Sean Marks, and the first-year coach, Kenny Atkinson, would presumably have determined which players best fit their free-flowing offensive scheme. The Nets’ brain trust would be on its way toward building a foundation that would lift the team out of the predicament it inherited from previous leadership, which forfeited valuable draft picks in grandiose trades.

On a more symbolic note, Sunday would also be Taiwanese Culture Night at Barclays Center, a homage of sorts for Jeremy Lin, the Nets’ top free-agent signing last summer. A scholar of Atkinson’s playbook after spending time together with the Knicks, Lin was going to head the rebuilding effort as the team’s starting point guard, while being a marketing force off the court.

And for months, Asian-American groups did snatch up ticket packages for Sunday in anticipation of watching Lin, a son of immigrants to the United States from Taiwan, take the court as the face of the franchise.