NEW ORLEANS — After the Nets completed a come-from-behind victory over the Mavericks Sunday night in Dallas, Paul Pierce stood in the locker room and declared the Nets can’t take any game for granted over these final few weeks of the regular season.
“This is just one, though,” Pierce said after Sunday’s win. “We’ve struggled in back-to-backs. We can’t be overly excited about one win. We have to start being a little more selfish now.
“We can’t have high emotions one night, and then an emotional letdown the next night. We have to come with the same attitude, night-in and night-out, because that’s what it’s going to take in the playoffs.”
But then the Nets went out Monday against an injury-depleted Pelicans team and did exactly what Pierce said they couldn’t, as they gave away a 22-point second-half lead before eventually falling in overtime 109-104 in front of 14,599 at Smoothie King Center.
“It’s very disappointing,” Pierce said Monday after leading the Nets with 24 points. “We let our guard down in the third. That’s when we had a chance to really put that team away.
“We stopped defending, stopped doing the things that got us the lead … we allowed them to get back in the game, and once they got their confidence, it’s a ball game.”
In many ways, Monday’s loss was the exact opposite of Sunday’s win for the Nets. They saw their four-game winning streak end — and fell two games behind both the Atlantic Division-leading Raptors and fourth-place Bulls in the Eastern Conference — despite leading by 16 at halftime and improving their edge to 22 early in the third quarter.
That was because the 37-32 Nets allowed the 30-40 Pelicans to fight their way back in the third behind 14 points from Tyreke Evans (33 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists), with the majority of those stats coming in the second half and overtime, while second-year superstar Anthony Davis had 24 points, 14 rebounds and three blocks.
New Orleans shot 12-for-19 (63.2 percent) from the field in the third, while the Nets went just 5-for-17 (29.4 percent) and watched their lead shrink all the way to 76-73 after three quarters when Evans’ four-point play with a second left capped a 29-10 run to close out the quarter.
“They attacked us more,” Deron Williams said. “They took it to us. They got a lot of easy baskets … just layup after layup after layup, Tyreke got going, we fouled and committed some dumb turnovers.
“It was just a bad quarter for us.”
The Nets certainly didn’t do that in the second half Monday, and found themselves in a surprising dogfight in the fourth quarter with the Pelicans, who were without starters Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson, as well as reserve big Jason Smith, due to injuries.
But the Pelicans had more than enough, responding after it appeared the Nets had put the game away again after a Deron Williams 3-pointer and Mirza Teletovic three-point play pushed the Nets’ lead to 84-75 early in the fourth quarter.
Once again, though, the Nets couldn’t maintain the lead, as the Pelicans went on a 16-5 run to take their first lead since the opening quarter when a layup by Evans with 3:25 remaining made it 91-89.
“It’s always easy to say that,” Shaun Livingston said when asked if the Nets got complacent because of their second-half lead. “We’ve got to play every possession.
“That’s what playoff basketball is about, and we’re trying to build on that. If we want to be a great team, not a good team, we have to be greedy. We have to push 10-point leads to 20, and 20-point leads to 30.”
Still, the Nets got new life when, after it appeared the game might have been over once they went down 98-93 with 1:14 remaining after a pair of Evans free throws, a Mason Plumlee put-back dunk followed by a Pierce 3-pointer with 24.1 seconds left tied the game at 98 and sent it into overtime.
But in the extra session, the Nets gave up a 3-pointer to Brian Roberts and two more to Anthony Morrow — the second with 54.5 seconds left — that cost them the game.
“It was tough,” Joe Johnson said of the way the game unfolded. “We had a tough win [Sunday in Dallas], and we couldn’t validate it [Monday]. We have to put it behind us and move forward.”