IF you watch the Nets regularly, then you have no idea how hard this is supposed to be. You have no idea what the stern-faced commentators mean when they look solemnly into the camera’s unblinking eye and say, “The last game is the hardest game to win.”
Close-out games are supposed to be bruising, bloody struggles for survival. The Nets make them look as easy as blinking.
Which is why the Pistons are in bigger trouble today than they know.
“We’re an experienced playoff team, and experienced playoff teams know how to take care of business,” is the way Kerry Kittles describes the Nets’ uncanny knack for closing out playoff series. “It’s not like we planned to get on a streak like this. Basically, you have a job in front of you and you do it. It’s as simple as that.”
The Nets have surely made it look simple. No team in the NBA takes care of its playoff business better, or more efficiently, than the Nets. Seven straight times, faced with the prospect of being able to end a series with one victory, the Nets have done just that, going all the way back to the epic Game 5 of the 2002 first round, when the Nets outlasted the Pacers in double overtime.
“If you remember, we had difficulty closing that series out,” Jason Kidd said, referring to the way the Nets had played thimble-small in Game 4 of that series, at Indiana, before they’d truly learned to understand how good they could really be. “And we had a hard time winning Game 5, too. When I remember that game, it felt like we were gonna have to play all night before we’d be allowed to win the game.”
Since then, though, the Nets have approached close-out games with the cold precision of paid assassins. In fact, all seven were claimed with relative ease, the exception being the come-from-behind effort they needed to knock off the Knicks earlier in these playoffs.
The venue has never mattered; in fact, they’ve only had the opportunity to win three close-outs at the Meadowlands, traveling near (Madison Square Garden) and far (Milwaukee’s Bradley Center) and twice into the most hostile of enemy territories (Boston’s “Wife Beater!”-chanting FleetCenter) to take care of the assignment at hand.
What may be most impressive is that since that Indiana series in 2002, the Nets have always won the close-out games with house money burning a hole in their pockets. They have always had the cushion of extra games in the series to fall back on, yet never did. Usually, nothing is more dangerous in the NBA playoffs than prosperity; it invites complacency, all but begs a team to start thinking ahead. How many teams have gotten burned thinking that way?
The Nets’ grim reliability in these games calls to mind their erstwhile corporate cousins, the Yankees, who were the most relentless closers in baseball history during their three-year championship reign of 1998-2000. In fact, before losing Games 6 and 7 of the 2001 World Series, the Yankees had won 11 of their previous 12 close-out games, falling only in Game 4 of the 2000 ALDS to Oakland, forcing a 3,000-mile trek before they could win Game 5.
“All the motivation you need,” Derek Jeter had said after that series win, “to never put yourself in that kind of position again.”
The Nets have learned those lessons well, borrowing Alec Baldwin’s motto from “Glengarry Glen Ross” – A.B.C. Always. Be. Closing.
Always be closing. The Nets have never wanted to settle for a set of steak knives. They’ve always gone after the Cadillac. Which is why the Pistons better be extra careful today. When the end is in sight, the Nets have a better finishing kick than Smarty Jones.