Mike Vaccaro

Mike Vaccaro

NBA

Good news: There’s still a pulse in Brooklyn

Yes, they are alive.

Yes, there is a pulse.

And maybe, just maybe, a season grows in Brooklyn.

“That,” Jason Kidd said, the smile a high beam, “is the way we play.”

It was an old philosopher named Pat Riley who used to insist a best-of-seven series didn’t really start until the home team lost. If we are to believe him, we still are in the getting-to-know-you phase of these Eastern Conference semifinals, thanks to the Nets rising from the dust to slap a 104-90 defeat Riley’s Heat, narrowing the gap in this series to 2-1.

Riley himself had his ear glued to a smartphone as he wandered the Barclays Center hallway afterward, and when he saw a familiar face he shook his head, put his hand over the speaker and said, “That wasn’t very pretty, was it?”

It was if you were wearing black and white Saturday night, if you were the Nets, forced to make another critical stand in these playoffs and answering the challenge splendidly. The first two, Games 6 and 7 against Toronto, were do-or-die gauntlets. The first one they aced; the second they escaped by a whisker.

This one, the stakes weren’t so daunting, the consequence of a loss not nearly so sinister. Still, you go down 0-3 to the two-time defending champions, you’re putting yourself in an unfixable fix. Or, as Paul Pierce said, straight faced: “You lose the first three games, the series isn’t in your favor.”

It still isn’t, not with the Heat’s recent playoff history of following every loss with a victory, no matter the setting, no matter the circumstance. But as Miami’s coach, Erik Spoelstra, was quick to remind: “This is a new year. This year has nothing to do with last year.”

All the Nets did Saturday night was hold serve. But, then, that’s all the Heat have done so far, too.

“We weren’t going to panic,” Pierce said. “And I think what this showed them was, we’re not going to panic. All they did the first two games was hold their home court.”

Said Joe Johnson: “We need to play with this same urgency the rest of the series.”

There was a lot to like about what the Nets did Saturday night. They withstood an early fury from LeBron James, who dropped 16 points in the first quarter. The Heat twice built five-point leads and seemed ready to bury them with a killing run early; the Nets refused to be bullied, fed off a souped-up Saturday-night crowd, then expanded a two-point lead to 14 by the end of the third quarter.

That meant the Heat would trail in a fourth quarter for the first time in seven playoff games. And though Miami has steadfastly denied it has gears, and is capable of shifting them whenever they need an extra boost, the truth is the Heat looked a little lacking in self-confidence once it became apparent there would be no miracle burst.

“To sum it up,” Spoelstra said, “they outplayed us.”

Said Dwyane Wade: “They played a better game than us. Simple as that.”

Pierce’s steadfast belief in what the Nets could do Saturday night was surely bolstered not only by the victory but the path they took there. Yes, there had been those four victories in four tries against the Heat in the regular season, but those four had been earned with a bare-minimum margin of error, three one-point wins, the other in double overtime.

This? This was end-to-end. In the second half it was wire-to-wire, the Heat never tasting the lead at all across the final 24 minutes, six players reaching double figures in points and a seventh, Deron Williams, adding 11 assists. The Nets needed to do more than win the game, they needed to send a signal to the Heat that those four nail-biters — and this blowout — were no fluke.

“The two games we lost, we felt we could’ve found a way to win and didn’t,” Kidd said. This time, given the opening, they barreled through, flattening the Heat, dispiriting them. It is the kind of effort that can have legs. And if it does …

“This changes the series,” Williams said, and he’s right. Now we have a series. And maybe, just maybe, a season grows in Brooklyn.