TORONTO — So here they were, nearing the end of an afternoon that was more an obstacle course from the old “Superstars” competition than a playoff basketball game, a fervid and fevered crowd crushing them, the Air Canada Centre shot clock crashing on them, the opposing general manager cursing them…
Here they were: Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce and the roughly 654,878,000 playoff minutes they have accumulated between them. For days, the Nets had cooed poetically about all the “experience” these two brought to this playoff series; for 44 ½ minutes, they had meandered about so quietly you wondered how useful all that experience was since most of it was attached to the players they used to be…
Here they were.
And here they are. Here is Garnett, who couldn’t locate the basket with GPS all day, gathering in a pass from — who else? — Pierce, knocking down a turnaround J straight out of 2002. Nets by three. Here’s Pierce — “The third option on the play,” he would later insist — knocking down a 3-pointer with Patrick Patterson Velcro-ed to him. Nets by six.
Here’s Pierce again: maybe taking an extra step (or maybe buying that extra step with all those playoff minutes, converting them like airline miles) and pushing the lead back to six. And Pierce one more time, sticking a pin in the crowd, sticking a fork in the Raptors, sauntering to the bench as Toronto calls a time out.
“That’s why they brought me here!” he crows, to no one and to everyone.
“It’s fun to go on the road and win,” Pierce said, the Nets having done just that, beating the Raptors 94-87 and stealing home-court advantage and generally fulfilling every prophesy they had promised these past 9 ½ months. “Sometimes, more fun that winning at home.”
It was one game that felt like six, a day that felt like a month. The Nets had answered a battery of questions about preferring the Raptors to the Bulls, disrespecting the Atlantic Division champs. They had awoken to the Toronto Sun’s clever backpage, “RAPTORS VS. DINOSAURS,” a clear reference to the fact that Pierce and Garnett, matching Triassics, are both 231.4 million years old.
Though they were busying themselves for the game, getting taped and wrapped and stretching and shooting, Toronto’s GM Masai Ujiri was going full WWE in front of a rabid pep rally at Maple Leaf Square, outside the arena, and he had a cheerful message of hospitality for his guests.
“Duck, Brooklyn!” is what he didn’t say. You easily can take a stab at what he did say. Best of all, meeting reporters at halftime to defuse the rancor, Ujiri offered what might have been the greatest non-apology apology of all time: “You guys know how I feel. I apologize, but I don’t like those guys.”
(And you thought Ujiri was at his evil best only when he was on the telephone with the Knicks …)
Oh right: the shot clock. Apparently there were no electricians on call in the entire province of Ontario. Apparently there were no sporting goods stores that deliver. The Raptors later cited a “signal path failure” for the snafu, which could have affected the game (but didn’t), and did afford PA man Herbie Kuhn the spooky duty of announcing the seconds as they fell off the invisible shot clock, a regular reminder of impending doom.
Yes. Quite a day.
Meanwhile, Deron Williams and Joe Johnson were carrying the Nets, and their bench was trying to sink them, and Shaun Livingston was making one big basket after another, and Garnett and Pierce were biding their time, hanging around the perimeter, lurking on the periphery…
And then here they were.
“That’s kind of what hurt us,” Toronto forward Amir Johnson said. “When Paul and KG made those two buckets.”
That’s kind of been the plan all along, from the moment they were imported from Boston, during all the nights when neither seemed especially happy to be hanging their hats in Brooklyn, to the periodic nights off (periodic weeks off for Garnett), to the slow start and the fast middle and the sluggish end…
Here they were. Lights. Camera. Traction.