TORONTO — For all of the justified talk about experience tilting in favor of the Nets heading into their Game 7 showdown with the Raptors on Sunday, they will take the floor with coach Jason Kidd managing his first winner-take-all game as a coach after playing in several of them throughout his career.
“It’s a first for everything for me,” Kidd said with a smile after piloting the Nets to their Game 6 win Friday in Brooklyn. “First playoff, first Game 1, first Game 2, and we can go on and on.
“Game 7 is just like Game 1 … it’s just, win a game. And the challenge is to find a way to win on the road, bottom line.”
Though Kidd may be in his maiden playoff voyage as a coach, a large part of why the Nets were able to stay alive was because of a series of adjustments Kidd made before and during Friday’s game 6 win.
That began with putting Alan Anderson into the starting lineup in place of Shaun Livingston, after Anderson was part of the team’s massive run in the fourth quarter of Game 5. It worked perfectly — having an additional 3-point shooter on the floor kept the ball moving and Toronto’s defense scrambling to keep up, leading to plenty of open lanes to the rim.
“It was just a feeling,” Kidd said. “It was more a feeling among the coaching staff, the way he played for us in that fourth quarter up in Toronto to see if he could carry that over, and he definitely picked up where he was in Toronto.”
Kidd also made other more subtle changes to his strategy in Game 6, including playing Kevin Garnett more minutes and receiving a strong showing from the aging icon in return and dropping Mason Plumlee from the rotation in favor of Andray Blatche, who rewarded him with an excellent all-around performance.
But Kidd also showed some veteran savvy when he instructed Deron Williams to remain on the far end of the court after tweaking his ankle in the third quarter, instead of having him come sit on the bench in order to see how he felt.
It gave Williams a chance to walk off his injury, and he wound up staying in the game and helped the Nets extend their season for at least a couple more days.
“The thought process was if he had to come out I didn’t want him to walk all the way over to the bench. I wanted him to shoot the free throws and make a decision on fouling [if we had to] at that point.”