Face it, the Nets just aren’t the same team on the road. So after celebrating their first victory of the season, they became a case of one and done through a fourth-quarter collapse yesterday at the Garden.
For a while, though, the Nets looked as if they might carry over the heady momentum gained from the victory that stopped their historic season-opening losing streak at 18 games Friday in the Meadowlands.
By halftime, they had 61 points. They ran into a Knicks zone but still were in position to make it two straight. They trailed, 93-90, after Courtney Lee drove for his second and last basket of the game, with 7:39 left.
Then the Nets of 0-18 surfaced. They committed five turnovers, missed 6 of 8 shots and gave up two killer offensive rebounds to the Knicks, one unconscionably on a free throw.
“We’ve got to make winning plays. To win in this league, you must make winning plays,” said Keyon Dooling, part of a triple point-guard offense (with Devin Harris and Rafer Alston) the Nets used for stretches
“Get loose balls, no extra possessions, somebody’s open, get them the ball. It’s the little things.”
The things the Nets didn’t do. Against one of their nightmare matchup teams — Al Harrington would be a unanimous Hall of Famer if he played the Nets 82 times — the Nets started well with their highest scoring half of the season. They had 30 in the first quarter, 31 points in the second (they had one other 30-point quarter all season and it was opening night). Their third quarter was awful: 33-18 Knicks.
“That was just completely on us. We fell flat a bit toward the end,” said Brook Lopez (19 points).
But still, a three-point game at 7:39.
“Those 50-50 balls we have to get and mental mistakes, we can’t have them,” said Chris Douglas-Roberts, who had 26 points.
So the Nets went miss, turnover (Dooling, travel), turnover (Alston, double dribble), miss, turnover (Douglas-Roberts pass), turnover (Harris pass). The Knicks went up, 99-90. Game. No winning streak. See Kiki Vandeweghe’s coaching percentage cut in half, to .500.
“You’re going to have sequences like that,” Harris said. “But we’ll fight through it. Obviously the effort is there. The guys are starting to play with one another, get the fun back . . . We had a bump-in-the-road second half, but we’ll continue to get better.”