At the start of 2014, there was little reason to think the Nets would wind up anywhere near the playoffs.
Despite spending close to $200 million of owner Mikhail Prokhorov’s vast fortune to construct a roster the team felt would be championship-caliber, the Nets were anything but through the opening two months of the season, bottoming out in an embarrassing blowout loss to the Spurs on New Year’s Eve.
But since the calendar flipped to 2014, the Nets have looked like a totally different team. Including Sunday’s 114-99 victory over the Timberwolves in front of a sellout crowd of 17,732 at Barclays Center, the Nets are an Eastern Conference best 29-12 in 2014. They’ve gone an NBA-best 19-2 in Brooklyn — including winning their last 13 in a row — and have moved to within one win of clinching a playoff berth.
“It just shows you the character of this group,” Paul Pierce said of the team’s turnaround. “A lot of teams with bad character, bad leadership in the locker room would’ve laid down a long time ago. Around Christmas, [they] probably would have been making summer plans.
“But we’ve got a mentally strong group in this locker room, full of veterans, and we were always staying positive, being patient with one another. We never had a locker-room rift. There was never no whispering going on, or one guy blaming the next guy. … We believed in Jason Kidd and we saw things turn around, and we made a resolution on the first that we’re going to somehow find a way to turn it around, and since then, we’ve been a growing ball club and we’ll continue to grow.”
Don’t count Timberwolves superstar Kevin Love among those impressed with the team’s turnaround, which has seen the Nets (39-33) zoom up the Eastern Conference standings, where they remain 2 ¹/₂ games behind the Raptors and 1 ¹/₂ games back of the Bulls for third and fourth, respectively, after both of those teams also won Sunday.
“Their vets are healthy, they got guys who can step up and make shots,” said Love, who then added, “They’re in the East.”
Some of Love’s resentment surfaces because his Timberwolves (36-36) are playing out the string in the much deeper Western Conference, while at least one and potentially two teams are likely to make the playoffs in the East with losing records.
But he also wasn’t willing to give Pierce, who finished with a game-high 22 points, any credit for the way he and the Nets shut him down offensively. Love finished with 14 points on 5-for-14 shooting to go with nine rebounds.
“They did a good job, but it was really just me being exhausted,” Love said. “I couldn’t find any energy in the second half.”
Why couldn’t he find any energy?
“I don’t know,” he said. “I might be getting sick or something.”
Pierce got the Nets off to a hot start for a second straight game, following up his 17-point first quarter Friday against Cleveland with a 16-point first quarter Sunday, knocking down all six shots he took, including four 3-pointers, to give the Nets an early lead. But bruising with the bigger Love in the post made him pull himself from the game with a couple minutes to go in the quarter.
“I was a little tired,” he said with a smile. “We had a little cushion and I decided to take a rest. I knew it would be a long game, especially when you’re battling against a guy who is one of the best in the game.”
The Nets did their best to give the game to the Timberwolves, committing 17 turnovers that led to 21 Minnesota points through the first three quarters. But some timely 3-point shooting from Alan Anderson — who knocked down three 3s in the fourth — and finally putting a lid on their turnovers allowed the Nets to put the game away, opening the fourth with a 20-9 run.
“Once we stopped turning the ball over,” Nets coach Jason Kidd said, “we got some great looks.”
Now that they have a playoff spot nearly wrapped up, the focus will turn to whom the Nets will face in the first round of the playoffs. And while it appears they are most likely headed toward a rematch of last year’s first-round series with the Bulls, the Nets say they are only focusing on themselves.
“We’re not worried about that,” Deron Williams said. “We’re worried about what’s going on in… this locker room.“We feel like we can compete with a lot of these teams, and in a seven-game series, we like our chances. We’ve just got to keep going, there’s still a lot of games left, and get as high a seed as we can and see who we match up against.”