In the wake of being blown out at home by the Spurs Sunday night and with difficult games at Indiana and home against Denver in front of them, it looked like the Nets were in serious danger of heading into the All-Star break in a major slide.
Instead, following Monday’s 89-84 overtime victory over the Pacers without Deron Williams, the Nets have a chance to enter the break with an entirely different feeling if they can knock off the Nuggets tonight inside Barclays Center.
“We hope so,” said Gerald Wallace after finishing with 11 points and 11 rebounds in Monday’s win. “This is the type of game that shows the character of this team. We came out and fought. We played together, everyone played their role, and everybody was just helping everybody out defensively.
“Everybody played their part tonight and we were able to get a win. They took the lead, got some momentum, but we were able to get it into overtime and controlling it.”
During the recent struggles the Nets have endured, losing three of their last four and six of their last nine before Monday’s win, the same issues were repeatedly brought up as the cause of the team’s slide: trusting each other, playing with energy and effort, being able to bounce back when their opponents made a run.
But the Nets were able to do all of those things against the Pacers. They used a great team defensive effort to limit the Pacers’ top three weapons — Paul George, David West and Roy Hibbert — to a combined 8-for-39 from the field, and managed to battle the physically imposing Pacers frontline to a standstill on the boards, thanks in large part to 22 rebounds from Reggie Evans.
More telling, though, was their ability to respond when the Pacers made a run that had seemingly given them the game. After the Nets had taken a 65-56 lead with 9:44 remaining on a layup by Wallace, the Pacers responded with a 20-7 run over the next eight minutes that was capped by a George Hill layup that gave them a 76-72 lead with a little more than 90 seconds remaining.
But rather than folding like they did in the second half against the Spurs, when the Nets were outscored 60-29, they fought back, holding the Pacers scoreless on four straight possessions to end regulation and getting a Joe Johnson jumper to tie it with 13 seconds left, before going on to win in overtime.
“This is obviously a very good team and we got a very good win,” Brook Lopez said. “Our guys stuck with it, and more importantly, we stuck together.
“With their runs, we responded tonight, and that’s a huge thing. We didn’t respond. We came back tonight, and when they made a little run, we gathered ourselves and went right back at them.”
Now the Nets are hoping to use the momentum they generated by beating the Pacers to carry themselves into the break on a positive note.
“We had guys come in and do some great things and contribute a whole lot to this win,” Wallace said. “We can look back at this and say if everybody’s ready and everybody plays their part when they come in, we know what we can do and know what we’re capable of as a team.”