There are nights like this for any team with a championship ambition, nights in which the most basic competitive elements are displayed. Nets have been looking upset lately. They seemed disinterested. It’s a long season. Spasms of poor basketball are inevitable. But if you are equal to your reputation, those things must pass.
They had lost three games in a row and looked pretty awful. They had a terrible loss in Detroit to a Pistons team, which on some nights seems to be already in play. They were the worst type of first runners: at the top of the game against great teams, coming down to the low level of smaller teams.
That was the message Steve Nash had for his players before they took their Pacers to Barclays Center on Wednesday night in their last game before heading west for what should be a terribly exciting five-day trip. Games:
“You can’t have fun the way you play.”
So, the Nets had fun on Wednesday night, certainly for a half-opener in which they not only hit the Pacers, but also erased any trace of imagination from the game. There was a 32-5 half that closed the half that didn’t end until they disappeared two minutes into the third quarter, the splurge extended to 39-8 and the score was a ridiculous 69-33.
They played so well for an extended period of time, it almost doesn’t matter that the Nets spent most of the second half sitting on deck chairs, allowing the Pacers to beat them 61-35 over the rest of the road. A victory is a victory. It was 104-94. He sent them on their happy journey, feeling much better about themselves.
And until they make their way through San Francisco, Sacramento, Phoenix and Los Angeles (for an interesting two-step uber with both the Lakers and the Clippers), they’ll reunite with Kevin Durant, be whole, and be able to return. at work to maximize fun.
“From the beginning you could say they were imprisoned,” Nash said, “and when they are imprisoned you could see why they are capable.”
It certainly helped the Pacers play the first half as a team that had been introduced to each other during the opening jump ball, but it fully deserved the Nets, who missed Durant and didn’t necessarily receive offensive A-plus efforts the other two thirds of their terrible troika, Kyrie Irving and James Harden (though combined, the two were an amazing 27-for-27 in line).
No, during the stretch that transformed the game, they played the way they always play when the times are right: with an effortless smoothness that lures the basketball purist all over the world. Even without Durant, there are so many basketball skills on display when things are going well, that’s probably what makes it twice as annoying when things go the other way.
The Nets, of course, were offered a few breaks. One is natural: the total duration of the NBA season, even a truncated one of 10 games, will allow them a long time to discover things. They’re just under two-thirds of a season.
The other is a little more surprising: despite the Nets’ 15-12 pedestrian record, they are still in third place in an Eastern Conference, where only 76ers (18-7) and Bucks (16-8 enter Wednesday’s game at Suns ) jumped at a better than average start to the season.
“Communication was there, the effort was there, we didn’t play defense like that all season,” said Joe Harris, who chipped in 17 points. “It’s definitely good to see us take a step in the right direction.”
Networks understand all this perfectly, of course. I know how much they are under control and seem to face it, even if it means acknowledging their shortcomings on a regular basis. Jeff Green spoke with his teammates after Tuesday’s mess in Motor City, and while it may not have been a complete sermon to Jesus, he touched on a common nerve: a good team that doesn’t play well is a heartbreaking thing. seen.
But one who gives?
For a long time on Wednesday night, I saw what this looked like. Choose your adjective: thrilling, amazing, exhilarating. As the Nets put their show on track, he hopes to be able to add a few more to that stack, not the other one, which includes: Frustrating. Tangled. Exasperating.