MIAMI — The Nets couldn’t wrap their hands around the basketball. One after another, the Heat kept taking shots, and those shots kept missing, and those rebounds kept bouncing this way and that, the ball ricocheting here and there, hither and yon.
“Fifty-fifty balls,” was the way Heat coach Erik Spoelstra described them.
The Nets were the desperate team now. They’d matched the Heat point for point most of the night, possession by possession, they’d even had a chance to take the lead with 6 ½ minutes left when Marcus Thornton lined up an open 3. Now they were down eight, and that’s not a great place to be.
But there were still 3 minutes and 39 seconds left.
And that’s not an impossible place to be, either.
“We were right there,” Nets coach Jason Kidd said. “We gave ourselves an opportunity against the world champions.”
But they needed stops. And they needed possessions. And in the most essential moments of this game — and, maybe, the most critical juncture of their season — they only got it half right. The stops weren’t the issue; LeBron James missed a 25-footer, then he missed a 19-footer, then he missed a driving layup.
That was the good.
This was the bad: One offensive rebound by Ray Allen — by Ray Allen! — and a second offensive rebound by Dwyane Wade and a THIRD offensive rebound by Chris Bosh. The Nets had coaxed James into three misses already. It wouldn’t happen a fourth time. Wade found James for a layup.
And that was it. That was the fork. The Heat were up 10, and that was bad; there was now only 1:59 left in the game, and that was insurmountable. The Nets needed someone, anyone to step forward, grab the ball, try and seize the game, try and pressure the Heat. And across 100 excruciating seconds, they got nothing.
A hundred-second possession that sealed a 94-82 win for the Heat. A hundred seconds that nudged them out to 2-0 lead in these best-of-seven NBA Eastern Conference semifinals. A hundred seconds that stripped the Nets of much of their margin for error. Saturday night, they play for their season, with little room to breathe.
“Now,” Deron Williams said, “we’re in a must win.”
He was part of the problem, of course, shooting 0-for-9, and if his assists (six) and rebounds (seven) proved he really had taken part in the game, it is still almost impossible to win a game like this when your franchise player scores as many points as … well, as many as you did Thursday night. As many as I did.
“I thought his overall game was really good,” Kidd said, which was a nice thing for him to say but either a) wildly delusional, and intended to keep Williams’ chin up or b) graded on a scale similar to the one Kidd himself would have requested last year at this time, when he went scoreless in the last 10 games of the playoffs.
But Kidd was 40 and a retiring role player. Williams is 29 and the Nets’ alleged cornerstone, allegedly in his prime. Even Williams himself wasn’t buying.
“I couldn’t buy a bucket,” he said, shaking his head. “And I couldn’t get to the line.”
In truth, the fact the Nets played the Heat as evenly as they did was a mirage, a testament to Mirza Teletovic raining 3s from every nook and cranny of AmericanAirlines Arena (game-high 20 points, 6-for-9 from deep) and Shaun Livingston playing a terrific offensive game (15 points, three assists).
But Paul Pierce disappeared in the fourth quarter. Kevin Garnett snared 12 rebounds but continues to be a liability on offense, and blew two easy shots that stalled the Nets’ efforts to keep pace. And Joe Johnson shot well, but his 13 points were far quieter than they needed to be.
“I’m trying to bring something,” Garnett said glumly.
Still, he wasn’t on the floor when the Heat enjoyed their hundred seconds of one-sided prosperity, when the game was there to be won for whichever team opted to get after the ball. The Heat did that. The Nets didn’t. The final score was no coincidence.
“A series like this,” Spoelstra said, “will be decided by extra possessions.”
Well, the talent the Heat has, that helps, too. But his point is a good one. If you’re not going to be the more talented team, you need to be the hungrier team. And so far, two games in, the Nets are 0-for-2 on both counts. That’s a recipe for an early summer.