There are evenings like this for any team with a whiskered championship ambition, nights that showcase the most basic competitive elements. The Nets looked uncomfortable lately. They seemed disinterested. It’s a long season. Spasms from bad basketball are inevitable. But if you’re the equal of your reputation, those things must pass.
They had lost three games in a row and they had looked pretty awful. They had suffered a terrible loss in Detroit to a Pistons team that seems to be playing some nights already. They’ve been the worst front runners: at the top of their game against great teams, lowering themselves to the level of lesser teams.
This was the message Steve Nash had for his players before they played their last game against the Pacers at Barclays Center on Wednesday night before heading west for what should be a very interesting five-game trip:
“You can’t have fun the way you play.”
So the Nets had fun Wednesday night, especially for an opening half where they not only beat up the Pacers, but also erased every trace of imagination from the game. There was a 32-5 run that closed the half that only really ended when two minutes had passed in the third quarter, the splurge had expanded to 39-8 and the score was a ridiculous 69-33.
You play so well for an extended period of time, it almost doesn’t matter that the Nets lean back on chaise lounges for most of the second half, making the Pacers score better than 61-35 the rest of the time. A victory is a victory. This one was 104-94. This cheerfully sent them on their way and felt a lot better about themselves.
And by the time they make their way through San Francisco, Sacramento, Phoenix and Los Angeles (for a very interesting two-step with both the Lakers and the Clippers) they will be reunited with Kevin Durant, they will be whole and they can to work to maximize their enjoyment.
“You could tell from the start that they were locked up,” Nash said, “and when they were trapped, you can see what they can do.”
It certainly helped that the Pacers played the first half as a team introduced to each other on the opening jump ball, but with full credit to the Nets, who missed Durant and who didn’t necessarily get A-plus attacking efforts from the other two-thirds of their amazing troika, Kyrie Irving and James Harden (though combined, the two were an astonishing 27-for-27 off the line).
No, during the play that turned the game, they played as they always play in good times: with an effortless smoothness that tickles the basketball purist in everyone. Even without Durant, there is so much basketball skill on show when things are rolling, which is probably what makes it twice as annoying when things are going the other way.
The Nets have, of course, been given a number of breaks. One is, of course, the sheer length of the NBA season, even one shortened by 10 games, gives them plenty of time to figure things out. There is just under two-thirds of a season left.
The other is a little more surprising: Despite the Nets’ 15-12 pedestrian record, they are still firmly in third place in an Eastern Conference, where only the 76ers (18-7) and Bucks (16-8) into the Suns) had jumped to a better-than-average season start.
“The communication was there, the effort was there, we haven’t been on the defensive all season,” said Joe Harris, who scored 17 points. “It is absolutely good to see that we are taking a step in the right direction.”
The Nets understand this all very well, of course. They know how much criticism they have and seem to welcome it, even if it means regularly acknowledging their shortcomings. Jeff Green spoke to his teammates after Tuesday’s mess in Motor City, and while that may not have been a full-blown sermon to get to Jesus, it struck a common nerve: A good team that doesn’t play well is heartbreaking. thing to see.
But one that does?
Wednesday evening we saw for a long time what that looked like. Choose your adjective: thrilling, breathtaking, thrilling. As the Nets get their show on the road, they hope to be able to add a few more to that pile, and not the others, including: Frustration. Enigmatic. Annoying.