The narrative can flip — and quickly. Just look at Joe Johnson. Look at him demanding the ball in the dire moments of a heart-thumping basketball game at the Garden, his team down a point, 19,033 people screaming themselves hoarse, most of them pleading for a stop.
Then listen to those 19,033 voices once Johnson gets the ball. They quiet just a little. Not the way they used to fall into resigned despair when Michael had the ball, or Reggie, or Hondo back in the day, but it’s there, the knowledge that this is exactly the guy we don’t want cradling the ball with the seconds bleeding off the clock.
Look at J.R. Smith, frantically trying to guard Johnson.
Now look at Johnson again.
“At the end of the game,” he will say, “you have to want the ball as much as if it’s the first possession of the game.”
There was a time, not so long ago, when it was fair to wonder what all the noise surrounding Johnson’s game was about. Unless you are a League Pass addict, it was hard to remember any signature moment from Johnson’s career. He was great because he was known to be great, the proud owner of wonderful numbers and a fat contract. There are a lot of guys like that playing well in basketball outposts.
Doesn’t mean they can do it here, in New York City, where patience lasts as long as a 20-second timeout. If you’re lucky. Johnson was up-and-down. The Nets stopped and started, and when that happens it’s the varsity players who shoulder the heat.
Then, on a Friday night in Brooklyn, he beat the Pistons and the double-overtime buzzer with a game-winner. Three weeks later, another Friday night in Washington, D.C., he beat the Wizards and the buzzer, again. Confidence is a funny thing: When it goes, it’s gone. But when it grows …
“There’s nobody you’d rather see with the ball in the end,” Brook Lopez says.
“He wants it, every time,” Deron Williams says.
“Yes,” Joe Johnson says. “I want to take that shot.”
Look at him now, ball in his hands, everyone — both sides, in the stands, on TV, everyone — knowing he’s going to shoot. He’s already lost Iman Shumpert, inserted to guard him, when Shumpert doubled the post. Now he eyes Smith, another guy who knows a thing or two about wanting the ball down the stretch. And a guy who knows a trick about thwarting Joe Johnson.
“Got to keep your arms up,” Smith says.
There are 25 seconds left in the game. Twenty-four. Smith, frantic to keep Johnson in front of him, lowers his arms.
“You can’t do that against Joe Johnson,” Smith says.
Not this Joe Johnson, the one who has ignited the Nets the past few weeks along with Williams, the one who rises now, lets it go, instantly knows, the way pure shooters know. Smith knows, too. The splashing net only confirms it.
“He’s feeling it,” Smith says. “You can tell.”
There is a flip side to that, of course. Johnson wears No. 7 for the Nets. No. 7 for the Knicks, Carmelo Anthony, had made the two free throws that gave the Knicks the lead. Now, down one, he wants to hold serve. He wants the ball. He has had a difficult night shooting, but he’s been terrific in other ways, getting Amar’e Stoudemire involved, playing defense.
Still, if there was little question Johnson was taking the shot for the Nets, there is no question Anthony will take it for the Knicks. But Gerald Wallace defends him brilliantly, veers him off balance when he drives to the baseline, forces an air ball.
The Garden groans.
“I missed it,” Anthony will say. “I didn’t execute. Shots I know I can make, I normally make, I didn’t make.”
Anthony knows what Johnson endured early in the season. Even now, in some precincts, he endures the same whispers, the same doubts, even as he’s turned in, to date, the greatest Knicks season since Bernard King, circa 1985. There will be other nights for him.
This one is for the other No. 7.
Listen to Nets coach P.J. Carlesimo: “He’s a monster player. He’s been a monster player his whole career.”
Most of that career was on the periphery. Not now. Not yesterday. Look at the Knicks, muttering to themselves. Listen to the Garden. They know it, too. All of them.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com