CHICAGO — It would have been understandable for Joe Johnson and Gerald Wallace to be exhausted after they played 52 and 50 minutes, respectively, in Friday’s double-overtime victory over the Pistons.
But the two Nets’ stalwarts on the wings did their best to carry the Nets to a win last night in Chicago with strong second half performances before falling short and losing 83-82 to the Bulls.
“We may have been a little fatigued, but that’s no excuse,” Johnson said. “We had control of this ball game with about three or four minutes left, and down the stretch we just had costly turnovers that turned into baskets for those guys.”
After the heavy minutes that both of them played against the Pistons, both looked like they were suffering from the effects of them in the first half against Chicago, as they combined to go 1-for-7 from the field for two points and one rebound.
But that changed after the halftime break, as both looked like they had caught a second win in the second half. After Johnson had been limited with foul trouble in the first half, he scored 14 of his 16 points after intermission, including nine points in the fourth quarter.
“I just got a couple of easy baskets, and from that point on, I was just trying to be aggressive for us and make plays,” Johnson said.
Meanwhile, Wallace hit a pair of 3s to help the Nets climb back into the game in the third quarter, and finished the second half with eight rebounds and four blocked shots, including preventing what seemed to be a couple of certain layups for the Bulls.
* When Jason Kidd stuck his leg out in order to draw a foul on Jerry Stackhouse Tuesday night on his game-winning 3-pointer with 24 seconds left that gave the Knicks a 100-97 win over the Nets, it should have been called an offensive foul.
But on a play that happened as fast as that one — one in which Stackhouse himself admitted he wasn’t sure what happened as it was unfolding — at the end of the game, why not give the referees the ability to review it?
That’s the idea Stackhouse floated before Friday’s game in Brooklyn against the Pistons.
“If they can go back and look and see whether it was a 3 or a 2 … if that is the case, you can go back and see if it was really a foul, or what happened on the play,” Stackhouse said before the Nets claimed a 107-105 double-overtime win over the Pistons.. “I would love to see us get to that point.”
“Take a look at everything, especially if it’s a play like that. And that’s a bang-bang play. If I’m an official on the court, maybe it looked like I ran into him.”