AT the end, there were only shrugs and whispers and emptiness inside the Meadowlands. The people began the long, slow trudge upstairs and outside, out to the Turnpike, the last vestiges of a magnificent dream faded almost entirely to black.
The Spurs celebrated quietly; they have bigger parties planned than this 93-83 victory. They need one victory in two potential games back home to wrap up a second NBA title in five years. Still, they could taste it. They could feel it. All the Nets could feel was numb. And all their fans could feel was a hollow ache.
What a time for Kenyon Martin to be sapped of his energy; perhaps the flu that’s wracked his body the past few days is the last kick of the old curse, arriving at the worst possible time.
What a time for Lucious Harris to lose his touch. What a time for Dikembe Mutombo to start acting his age.
And what a time for Steve Kerr to set his watch back a few years, wind up that golden shooting arm of his, reach into the Nets’ chests and pull out their hearts.
What a time for all of that.
Now comes a long flight to San Antonio, and a longer wait for Game 6 on Sunday, and the knowledge they will need two road victories to attain all that’s been within their grasp this past week, these past months, these past two years.
Who knows what follows from here? Who knows if this was Jason Kidd’s last game wearing the home white uniform at the Meadowlands? Who knows how long the Nets will have to wait, and how hard they will have to work, to get right back where they were at the start of last night, tied 2-2 in the Finals, two victories shy of the summit?
Too many questions, too little time. A beautiful quest, standing on its final legs.
When the Nets came out of the last huddle of pregame and tore off their warm-ups, they were wearing throwback uniforms, the old red, white and blue colors of their ABA glory days. High in the rafters sit two banners from those days, gold crowns capping ABA basketballs, and it was a splendid attempt to re-capture the spirit of those teams.
Of course, it would have helped significantly if Julius Erving, Larry Kenon, Bill Melchionni and Super John Williamson would have come out alongside Kidd, because those four long-retired heroes of yore would have given the Nets a better effort than the real-live Nets did in the early stages of the game.
As often as we say, and believe, that the Nets can’t lower the ugly bar any further in this series, they always seem to find a way to take a pick-ax and bore a hole ever deeper through the floor. Across the game’s first 24 minutes, the Nets actually managed to make San Antonio’s Game 4 shooting calamities look downright marksmanlike, missing 28 of 38 shots, looking utterly lost on the offensive end.
The Spurs were sporting about all of this, of course, because that seems to be the recurring theme of this series. Given every opportunity to blow the Nets out of the gym, they instead made a dogged effort to keep them in the game.
It wasn’t until the third quarter when it felt like the Nets even had the full attention of the 19,280 inside the Meadowlands. By that point, Roger Clemens had gotten his 300th win, so the buzz around the building finally was all about the Nets. That also happened to be the exact time the Nets not wearing No. 5 finally arrived for work, too.
That was enough to give the Meadowlands one final bolt of energy, one last boost of life, but it wasn’t enough to fool anyone that it was anything more than a death rattle. The Nets didn’t lose the series last night. But they sure may have lost their last best chance to win it.
