MIAMI — When the Nets introduced Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett as the team’s newest acquisitions last July, the two newest and biggest pieces of this $190 million experiment, they weren’t shy about their championship aspirations for their first season in Brooklyn.
“Obviously the talent is there,” Pierce said while sitting inside Barclays Center last summer. “I think you’ve got all the ingredients for a championship team. It’s just how well we put the seasoning salt in and the pepper and all the little spices together, and how well it’s going to come all out.
“That’s the only reason we gathered,” said Garnett. “You don’t gather to win a series. You don’t put a team like this to get to the Eastern Conference Finals or whatever.
“The ultimate goal is what it is. That’s why we’re here.”
The ultimate goal, of course, was to dethrone the two-time defending champion Heat — the team that originally was created to dethrone the Celtics as the team to beat in the East — and claim the Nets’ first NBA championship. But after the Nets were beaten on their home floor by the Heat in Game 4 Monday — giving the Heat a 3-1 edge in the series — those championship aspirations for this season could officially end in Game 5 Wednesday night on the shores of Biscayne Bay.
“We just got to get one game,” Pierce said after Game 4. “That’s the mind-set. The series is far from over.”
The Nets had their chances through these first four games, finding themselves in competitive battles in the fourth quarter, only to see Miami make one or two extra plays in each to push the Nets to the verge of going home for the summer.
This was not what Pierce and Garnett had hoped for when they came from Boston to Brooklyn, as they were handed another opportunity to team up to try and take down LeBron James — who they beat twice in Cleveland in the playoffs in the 2008 and 2010 Eastern Conference semifinals, but who is on the verge of knocking them out of the playoffs for the third time in the last four years since heading to Miami.
But it’s the situation the Nets find themselves in if they’re unable to come away with a Game 5 win to extend their season.
It’s been a season full of ups-and-downs for both former Celtics, much as it has been for the Nets as a whole. That went all the way back to before the start of training camp, when Garnett and coach Jason Kidd went back-and-forth publicly over Kidd’s publicly stated plan to rest Garnett in one half of each of the team’s 20 sets of back-to-backs and limit his minutes in order to keep him as ready for the playoffs as possible.
Kidd wound up sitting Garnett in several of those situations, though Garnett also missed 19 games with back spasms in March and early April. But Kidd carefully managed Garnett’s minutes throughout the regular season, rarely playing him more than 20 minutes per game. He has kept the veteran forward around that number through the playoffs outside of pushing Garnett for a few extra minutes each in Games 6 and 7 against the Raptors and in Game 4 Monday against the Heat.
But since Jan. 1, when the Nets shifted to a smaller lineup in the wake of Brook Lopez being lost for the season with a fracture of his right foot, both men have thrived in their new roles — Garnett playing center and Pierce at power forward — as the Nets put up one of the best records in the Eastern Conference over the final few months of the season and got past the Raptors in seven hard-fought games in Round One.
All indications are the Nets will have both back next season, despite talk of Garnett potentially retiring with a year left on his contract and Pierce set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer. But they came to Brooklyn with dreams of a championship in Year One — dreams that will disappear with one more loss to James, their oldest and most bitter rival, and the man they came to the Nets to get one more chance to beat.