AUBURN HILLS – All season long there were signs, warnings that these weren’t the same Nets, that the karma that fueled them for two seasons was missing, that the savvy that dragged them through the difficult times was gone.
You can shrug these things off across the vast 82-game exhibition, especially with two runs to the NBA Finals under your belt. You can use euphemisms. When you struggle through a rough patch, you’re “working on things.” When you suffer and bleed to beat lousy teams, you shrug and cloak yourself in a copy of the injured list.
And say: Wait till the playoffs. Things will be better then. Only, the playoffs are here. The Pistons are here. And the Nets are not, at least not the Nets we’ve seen in the years since Jason Kidd arrived to lead them out of the wilderness.
The Pistons beat up the Nets again last night, 95-80, and they now have a commanding 2-0 lead in these Eastern Conference semifinals, and the Nets are in the most unusual position of having to win two straight games at home over the next three days, or bid farewell to a third straight trip to the Finals.
“They came out and they held their court and they basically told us we have to do the same thing if we want to stay in this series,” Nets forward Richard Jefferson said. “I guess we’ll see exactly what kind of a team we have the next couple of days.”
The signs and the warnings all melded into one dreadful nightmare spasm in the second half, turning what seemed earmarked to be a reputation-salvaging romp into a squalid embarrassment. Kidd made a 15-foot jump shot two minutes into the third quarter, giving the Nets a 50-38 lead, and the Pistons had their toes nudged over the edge of the abyss, another possession or two away from waving a flag of surrender.
Instead, it was the Nets who sued for peace.
It was the Nets who suddenly couldn’t find the basket, other than five lousy free throws in the final 30 seconds of the quarter. It was the Nets who kept turning the ball over, who missed 10 straight shots while the Pistons were making eight in a row, who saw their lead shrivel to seven, shrink to three, wither to one. Then Richard Hamilton sank a pair of free throws with 3:43 left in the quarter, and there was no lead at all left to count.
Stunningly, there wouldn’t be one ever again.
“We lost our patience,” Kidd said, “and when we did that, we lost out composure.”
Soon enough, they lost everything else. By the time the Pistons were through, the run was 43-15, the score was 81-66, The Palace was crazier than Woodstock, and the Nets looked utterly overmatched. Again.
“Our cushion is gone,” said Kerry Kittles. “Our margin for error is non-existent.”
It was such a departure from everything we’ve seen from the Nets of recent vintage. Those Nets thrived on playoff challenges, especially on the road. During games – at least against Eastern Conference opponents – they seemed to be at their best whenever adversity greeted them, in the form of an offensive drought or a defensive slump. They thrived on the heat of the fourth quarter. They intimidated their opponents into making mistakes.
Those Nets, for now, seem as distant a memory as the Dr. J Nets.
These Nets, for the first time in their history together, now face a week of unparalleled pressure. They’d be better off sending out a search party for their former selves. The Old Nets could have figured a way out of this pickle. We’re not sure about anything the New Nets are capable of.