The Nets are being careful not to get carried away.
But, wowie, they won back-to-back games and four of five. They can beat anyone, we tell you, anyone. Bring on the Celtics, Spurs, Pistons. Even the Patriots . . .
OK, that’s getting carried away. But something is stirring as the Nets prepare to enter the 2008 portion of the NBA season.
At 14-16, they still are two games south of officially being mediocre. Their recent run of success includes wins over the Wizards without Gilbert Arenas, the Bucks without Desmond Mason and the struggling Heat. Still, they were wins. Now they need consistency.
In earlier weeks, the talk was about when or if the Nets could turn it around. Now, on something of a roll after beating the Bucks, 97-95, in Milwaukee Saturday, the Nets don’t want to insinuate all is well and the struggles are behind them.
“I don’t know when the annual turnaround is because I don’t know when we start playing better,” said Jason Kidd, asked if the recent surge represents a turnaround like the Nets do every year. “But [for] three or four games, we’ve been playing pretty good.”
Coach Lawrence Frank praised a hustling and emotional effort Saturday while warning about squatting on 4-1 laurels. There is room for loads of improvement.
“It’s good we finish up the year with four of five. We’re disappointed with what we’ve done prior to that and we still have a long way to go,” Frank said. “But with that type of fight, commitment, that type of passion our guys displayed [Saturday] we’re going to win a whole lot more than we’re going to lose . . . We’re not even at the midway point. We want to keep on building and getting better.”
The Nets go to Orlando Wednesday when they’ll see the team that slaughtered them by 25 points in November. Their recent wins make them more confident but this is another chance against a division leader.
So far, they’ve stunk in that category – 0-2 vs. Boston, 0-2 vs. Detroit, 0-1 vs. Orlando. They lost those five games by a total of 99 points (11, 22, 25, 23 and 18).
But they’d rather talk about their recent successes and the future – which has Nenad Krstic on the horizon in upcoming weeks. If healthy, he’ll help enormously.
“Hopefully everybody is taking things a little more seriously and we know it is time now to turn things around,” said Bostjan Nachbar. “We can’t wait much longer and these last five games show we are trying to do that.”
Like Saturday. The Nets settled in after a turnover-plagued start and with a rare outpouring of on-court emotion from Kidd and Vince Carter – the Big Three, including Richard Jefferson, again gave huge contributions – hung on to win.
“We always have emotion,” Jefferson said. “Yes, it doesn’t look pretty. Some nights we get blown out other nights we can’t hit a shot. But it’s never like we just come out and BS our way through it . . . The group is feeling good. We won a couple games in a row, laid an egg against Detroit, had some close games and won those. So it’s just a matter of continuing to build consistency.”