TORONTO — Stop us if you have heard this before.
The heck with it. Stop us right now. You have heard it before.
The Nets, following a highlight reel-worthy breakaway dunk by Jordan Farmar, held a six-point lead with 9:28 remaining. And in this tight, seesaw type game, a six-point lead was considerable. But then . . .
Here’s where you have heard it before.
The Nets’ offense struggled and fizzled. The defense couldn’t get stops when absolutely necessary and — surprise, surprise — the Nets lost. This 98-92 defeat to the Raptors, with Andrea Bargnani trampling the Nets for 32 points, was their ninth loss in 10 games.
“We’ve got to execute better down the stretch,” said Farmar (nine points, five assists).
“We came to play tonight. We just couldn’t finish,” coach Avery Johnson said
“We pretty much had control of the game until the fourth quarter,” said Devin Harris (15 points, six assists).
“We had a couple of defensive breakdowns,” said Brook Lopez (20 points). “We did a great job of getting stops early and running off that and that kind of evaporated.”
And so did their hope of winning. After that flying Farmar jam off a turnover, the Nets missed nine of 11 shots, tossed in three turnovers and on the other end failed to arise defensively. The killer shot, one of three critical plays singled out by Johnson, came from Leandro Barbosa (10 points), who banged home a 3-pointer at :14.9, beating the shot clock by :00.9. The Nets, down two, doubled Bargnani who kicked it out to Barbosa for the dagger and a 97-92 lead.
“We didn’t want him to throw the ball back out to Barbosa,” Johnson said. “We wanted him to swing it to the weak side, but Barbosa got the ball.”
And rammed it down the Nets’ throats.
“We wanted to make someone beat us besides Bargnani,” Harris said — so Barbosa filled the role.
So that was one of the three plays singled out by Johnson, who saw his team welcome Sasha Vujacic (six points, 3-of-10 shooting) to the rotation. There was another lost defensive rebound off a free throw — this one at 8:16, leading directly to a triple by Jose Calderon (15 points, 14 assists) that gave the Raptors a short-lived 80-79 lead at 8:09.
And there was an airball by Travis Outlaw (14 points, 40 minutes) who seemed exhausted after taking over for starter Quinton Ross. Ross lasted less than two minutes, exiting with a bruised lower back. Outlaw’s shot came at 1:01 and preceded the Barbosa trifecta.
Bargnani, who fired in 11 of his points in the fourth, missed the Raptors’ previous game with a sore left knee. The decision to let him play proved deadly for the Nets (7-20). Even deadlier than the decision to return point guard Calderon from a four-game absence caused by a sore left foot.
But even with Bargnani — “a tough cover for anybody,” Johnson said — going nuts and Calderon passing and scoring, the Nets felt good about their position. They got another workman effort from Kris Humphries (12 points, 12 rebounds). They had Vujacic learning on the fly. They had makeshift lineups. They had the game. Like they have had so many other games. But they lost it. Like they have lost so many other games.
“We couldn’t get any stops to get out on the break. When we did, we got something good,” Johnson said. “But we just didn’t execute any of our plays.”