So the playoffs arrive in Brooklyn, at last, just as the Nets prepare to leave, just as they board a plane bound for O’Hare. Fifty-seven years — plus one anxiety-free game — and the feeling returns, the angst rises, the stomach churns and the heart palpitates.
Yes. This is what you were missing, Brooklyn.
Saturday night, the imperfect team played a perfect game. Everything the Nets looked at found the bottom of the basket. The Bulls looked as if they were shooting at 11-foot rims. It isn’t like that in the postseason, no matter the sport, no matter the year. Not every game. Not every night.
“They missed some shots they made the other night,” Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau said after his team evened the first-round series 1-1 with a grinding, grueling 90-82 win at Barclays Center. “Sometimes it comes down to that: make or miss.”
Two nights earlier, the Nets had made everything, they’d chased the Bulls onto Flatbush Avenue, onto the Manhattan Bridge, back to their luxury hotel on the other side of the East River.
Fifty-seven years had passed since the Yankees pasted the Dodgers 9-0 at Ebbets Field, a couple miles south of here, in Game 7 of the ’56 Series. Yogi Berra hit two homers off Don Newcombe, Johnny Kucks threw a three-hitter. Next Year had returned — and stayed for 57 years.
And now this: a reminder, as unwelcome as swarm of summertime mosquitoes and just as inevitable.
“We dug a hole,” Nets interim coach P.J. Carlesimo said, “and we were chasing the whole game.”
Said Deron Williams: “We played hard enough. We just didn’t play good enough.”
The Bulls were relentless, as advertised. They defended every possession, across every inch of the floor, as advertised. Joakim Noah, playing with plantar fasciitis, meaning that every step he took probably made him want to scream or vomit from the pain, somehow scored 11 points, grabbed 10 rebounds.
“We knew,” Carlesimo said. “This is a series against a very good team. We knew we had our work cut out for us.”
So this is where it starts, at the place where Pat Riley always says a playoff series starts, the first time a home team loses. Barclays tried to interrupt the Bulls as they pilfered home-court advantage. There was a moment, late in the fourth, Brooklyn having trimmed a 14-point deficit to four, the Nets on the break, Joe Johnson squaring up behind the 3-point line.
Johnson was invisible for 2 1/2 quarters, but he had caught fire. He was open. He had a clean look. Seventeen thousand people were poised and coiled to test the fine foundation of this beautiful basketball basilica, ready to send the copper-toned roof into orbit and the Bulls home 0-2.
Sometimes it comes down to that: make or miss.
Johnson missed.
The crowd fell silent. Soon they were hurrying to make the final LIRR trains home to the Island, or to grab a subway back across the river, or to make the slow walk to their homes in the borough, feeling something they hadn’t felt in years, or maybe had only through the proxy of their grandparents’ old stories.
Angst. Agita. Anguish. Aaaaargh.
“All this means is we have to win one now in Chicago,” Williams said. “The series isn’t over.”
No. It most certainly is not over. The torment, in fact, is just beginning, so the fun is just beginning, too. Look, we know these aren’t sporting virgins wearing their Brooklyn gear now, enjoying this fresh journey along Atlantic Avenue. Nets fans have had their hearts broken before, by the Mets or the Jets, maybe by the Knicks or the Jersey Nets in a former basketball life, or the Rangers. This isn’t anybody’s first rodeo, not really.
They know the drill. Know it by heart. Been there. Agonized over that.
Still, Brooklyn hadn’t lost, not in 57 years, not in theory and not in fact. Until now. And now is when the fun begins. Now is when the playoffs finally arrive in Brooklyn, as the Nets depart, an imperfect team ready to grind their way back home.