Thoughts on the Game: It Almost Happened
Now I know I shouldn’t be happy. In fact, I should be spitting angry. I was at one point, but after the Nets dropped two tight games to fall to 0-7 (the worst start in franchise – including both the ABA and NBA stints – history), I am easing up on the opinions of the Nets. This team just continues to lose players, and the healthy guys seem to rally around each other and just play as hard as they can. Even Sean Williams is going out there and giving the Nets productive minutes. He was 2-2 today for 4 points, 2 of them coming off of a big time put back jam.
Some critics are going to say the Celtics mailed this one in, and when they decided to pull away they did. I can’t really go for that. Why? Well, the Celtics game out of the locker room and dug in. They were playing tougher on defense, and executing better on offense, in fact at one point in the third, they went on an 11-0 run. The Nets could have given up at that point (sort of like what happened in Denver), but they didn’t. They responded with an 8-0 run of their own, and ended up extending their slim lead in the third quarter. Other critics will say that the Celtics were playing the second game of a back-to-back stretch, so that wasn’t the REAL Celtics out there. What they will fail to mention is that the Nets were coming off a similar back-to-back stretch, and they were doing it with 8 players (7 really) over the past game and a half.