MIAMI — They have made this long, heartbreaking trip too many times during their storied careers, the walk out of one season into next season, and it had arrived now a little before 10 o’clock, a deafening roar belonging to LeBron James and the Heat, the 96-94 winners, and not them. Not Jason Kidd, not Paul Pierce, not Kevin Garnett. And not poor Joe Johnson, who had carried Brooklyn on his back and wanted so badly to be the hero.
In the end, at the end, the Nets had no one to blame but themselves. The Heat didn’t win this game as much as the Nets lost it.
They lost an eight-point lead with 4:49 remaining, because they missed nine straight shots, because they were playing not to lose, and when Ray Allen hit one of his patented big 3s from the left corner, over Johnson, and it was Heat 93, Nets 91 with 32 seconds left, and AmericanAirlines Arena sounded ready for takeoff.
The Nets had one last chance because Johnson had buried a 3 from the left corner with 11.4 seconds left and LeBron sank one of two free throws with 9.5 seconds left. Heat 96, Nets 94.
Paul Pierce had the ball and the game and the season in his hands and was surrounded by Allen and LeBron near the sideline. LeBron swatted his right arm, no foul. Review. Brooklyn ball. Five seconds left.
The ball found its way to Johnson’s hands. It had to. He had been heroic, one of the signature games of his career, 34 points on 15-of-23 shooting. He dribbled to his right where Allen began reaching in and harassing him. Johnson began losing control of his dribble. Then LeBron reached in and swiped it away with his left hand.
“It’s very frustrating,” Johnson said. “I just never could really get hold of the ball for whatever reason, so … it was tough.”
For whatever reason meant for this reason: “Yeah, I felt like I was fouled,” he said.
Game anyway.
Season anyway.
“Honestly, it shouldn’t even came down to that,” Johnson said.
He tried to explain why:
“We just, defensively man, had a lot of breakdowns within the last minute.
“Just playing too cautious, playing against the clock, not being aggressive making plays … then the clock gets down to like five [seconds] or three and then taking tough shots. We made it hard on ourselves.”
They will live with the regret of knowing in their hearts there should have been a Game 6 back in Brooklyn.
“Sometimes,” Pierce said, “we didn’t play smart.”
James was out of sync and out of sorts, his killer instinct nowhere to be found, a veritable spectator as Dwyane Wade carried the Heat on his shoulders, until the fourth quarter, of course, when it was Winning Time, when James scored 14 points and reject a late Johnson shot.
The Heat couldn’t throw it in the ocean from Biscayne Bay, as they missed 15 of their 16 3s in the first half.
The Nets were playing with a desperation and a defiance, Deron Williams playing with that intermittent swagger.
Most of all, Johnson was Joe Cool, Big Shot Joe, even over LeBron.
“Obviously got into a little rhythm, and was just trying to make plays for us,” Johnson said.
This wasn’t the scene Mikhail Prokhorov envisioned when he brought Pierce and Garnett to Brooklyn, when he laughed at the $79 million luxury tax, when he gambled that Kidd the rookie coach could mimic Kidd the Hall of Fame point guard.
The expectations soared through the roof of Barclays Center the minute Pierce and Garnett showed up talking that championship talk.
Perhaps it would have been different if Brook Lopez hadn’t fractured his foot in December, and fractured Prokhorov’s dreams of world domination along with it.
Perhaps not.
The bar by which the season should be measured was forever lowered in the absence of the franchise center.
Failure? No.
Just not a success.
“Very disappointing to go out like this,” Johnson said.