TORONTO — When the Nets put together this $190 million roster last summer, the goal was to compete for a championship. But now, after splitting the first four games of their first round series with the Raptors, the Nets head into a pivotal Game 5 Wednesday perilously close to seeing their season end without winning a single playoff series.
“We need a win,” Deron Williams said after the Nets practiced Tuesday before flying to Toronto. “We need a win in the worst way. We dropped the ball last game at home, and didn’t protect home court, so now we’re in the same position we were in going into Game 1.
“We have to steal one.”
If the first four games of the series are any indication, the Nets will have their chance to do so. Like the four meetings during the regular season between these Atlantic Division rivals, each game in the series so far has hung in the balance heading into the game’s final minutes, with each team alternating in their ability to find a way to close things out effectively.
Despite the fact the Nets entered the series with a decided edge in experience, Kevin Garnett gave credit to the division champion Raptors — echoing Paul Pierce’s sentiments after Toronto’s Game 4 victory in Brooklyn.
“We are not playing a shabby team here,” Garnett said. “We respect our opponent and understand they can put a lot of points up. Believe me, if we had that thing that you put in a bottle to shut it down, we would have used it already and used it more often.
“We are playing a very good team and we respect them and we got to figure out ways to close better in the second half.”
It would help if the Nets could finally find a way to get their outside shot working as a team. After switching to their small-ball, perimeter-based look back at the start of the new year, the Nets have become a team that relies heavily on its 3-point shooting.
But through the first four games of the series, the Nets have shot just 22-for-88 (25 percent) from behind the arc — with many of those shots coming in the form of wide-open looks — leaving Pierce to say they should also consider taking the ball to the basket more often when the opportunity presents itself.
“I haven’t really given it thought,” Pierce said of the team’s poor outside shooting. “I think a lot of the shots that we are getting are good shots, but I just think when you look at the tape, a lot of those shots we are taking are drivable plays. So we’ve just got to do a better job of understanding when to take those shots and when to be aggressive.”
Regardless of how they go about doing it, the Nets know they need to leave Air Canada Centre Wednesday night with a win to give themselves a chance to close the series out in Game 6 Friday back in Brooklyn. Despite heading into a hostile environment with the Raptors hoping to come one game closer to claiming their first playoff series victory since 2001, the Nets expect their experience to help them secure a second road win.
“Just staying focused, just staying together is the main key,” Shaun Livingston said. “Obviously we’re going back to their building, it gets rowdy, they have home-court [advantage], but we have to stay focused on the game and stay together and not get ahead of ourselves.”