At least the Nets didn’t blow a 17-point lead.
This time, it was only 12.
And that’s only part of it. The Nets, who have been on playoff life support through the magic of mathematics, the power of hope and a strong belief in Santa and his elves, helped drive yet another nail in their postseason coffin last night with a 102-98 loss to the Pacers, the team currently holding the eighth and final spot in the Eastern Conference.
“It’s definitely still a goal,” said Brook Lopez, who finished with 20 points for his 11th straight game of 20 or more. “We don’t want to just ride out the season.”
There are only 13 games left for the Nets (22-47), who now trail the Pacers (31-40) by eight full games.
“There’s hope,” Lopez said, sounding as if he was trying to convince himself. “Well, that’s why I went to Stanford, for the math to figure this out.”
Last night’s loss, on the heels of Sunday’s loss in Washington when they blew a 17-point lead, didn’t need a heckuva lot of figuring. The Nets set themselves up to fail long before the frantic endgame saw them scrambling to try to overcome an 11-point deficit with just over two minutes left.
Their inability to close out the ends of quarter — coach Avery Johnson called it a “big point of emphasis” — didn’t help. The Pacers closed the second quarter on a 12-4 run and the third with a 9-3 spurt. And that’s how you lose a lead that rose to 12 at 31-19 in the second quarter.
The Nets, without small forward Damion James (foot) and playing a second straight game without Deron Williams (strained right wrist), got it all the way down to two in the fourth quarter behind some 3-point heroics. Sasha Vujacic (14 points) tripled at 1:34 and 1:03, Sundiata Gaines (career-high 18 points) knocked down a 3-pointer with 3.2 seconds to make it 100-98 and Anthony Morrow (12 points) started the comeback with a trey at 2:09.
The true back-breaker came with the Nets trailing 98-95 and inbounding with 24.6 seconds left. The hope was to go inside and have Lopez try for an and-one three-point play. If not, the ball could be kicked out to Vujacic.
“We were trying to go inside to get a three-point play with Brook. Sasha fell down. I don’t know if he got tripped. And we just couldn’t get the ball inbounds,” said Johnson. “If Brook wasn’t open, Sasha was going to have the whole left side to try to get us a 3-pointer. Sasha just fell down.”
So the ball wound up with Gaines, who had been knocked down (“horse-collared,” Johnson said) by Josh McRoberts with the score 98-94 while going for a rebound, hoisting hurriedly from the right side. It missed, but the Pacers knocked the ball back out. So the Nets missed again, Vujacic quick-shooting a triple. Darren Collison hit four free throws in the final 9.6 seconds to bring the Pacers, who got 24 points from Roy Hibbert, the win.
“When I went down, I got pushed,” Vujacic explained. “I’m not going to flop at the end with a play like that. I got tripped a little bit. They didn’t want to call it, which is OK. We had another opportunity. We didn’t take advantage.”
Of that chance or the opportunity to stay a little more than on life support in their unlikely postseason hunt. The Nets said they have been “quietly embracing the playoffs” since their five-game winning streak three weeks ago.
“We’re quietly embracing trying to win a game right now, that’s what we are quietly embracing,” said Johnson, looking ahead to tomorrow’s road game in Cleveland. “That’s all we’re trying to talk about.”