KENYON MARTIN was going to be a grown-up about all of this. The words that came tumbling from his mouth spoke of a contrite, humbled star coming up small in the biggest game of his young career. Even as his eyes, runny and raw, told a different story.
“Don’t talk about the officials, don’t talk about being sick, don’t talk about nothing except me,” Martin said, huddled in his locker, a blue towel shrouding his shoulders and a furry black cap swaddling his head. “I was terrible tonight. I had a bad game tonight. End of story.”
In a few moments, Martin would walk slowly across the Meadowlands floor, head bowed. His fiance, Heather, held his right hand. In his left he carried a portable baby seat, in which his infant daughter, Cierra Reign, slept blissfully. A few well-wishers asked how he was feeling. Martin’s answer hadn’t changed.
“I feel fine,” he said. “I just played bad. Real bad.”
It was impossible to believe that, of course, impossible to accept that the flu bug that ravaged Martin these past few days wasn’t the biggest culprit in the Nets’ deflating 93-83 defeat to the Spurs last night, a loss that nudged the Nets right to the brink of the abyss.
If you’ve ever seen the way Kenyon Martin attacks a basketball game, especially a critical one, then the way Martin meandered through this one tells you how awful he had to feel. He scored four points. He turned over the ball eight times, including two absolute killers down the stretch. He did grab nine rebounds, tried to fulfill his share of Tim Duncan responsibilities. He tried.
But he never looked so vulnerable. Or so invisible.
“Kenyon has been our emotional leader, our ‘A’ player in this series, and for him to feel under the weather and not up to par is tough,” Jason Kidd said.
“Obviously,” Byron Scott said, “being sick affected him.”
They all knew. On a night when the Nets could have scaled to within shouting distance of the Larry O’Brien Trophy, they were forced to do it missing their soul and half their heart. Tough assignment. Maybe this was the old Curse giving one final kick in the stomach on the way out the door, reminding the Nets – clad, appropriately enough, in their Dr. J-era uniforms – that they can run from their tortured past but never completely hide from it.
“I feel fine,” Martin insisted. “To tell you the truth, I felt better tonight than I did [in Game 4]. No excuses. Just a bad game. I’ll play a better one on Sunday.”
You must credit Martin for his restraint, because inside he clearly was torn up, in a way that had nothing to do with the flu. Martin’s passion is what got him out of the Dallas playgrounds, it’s what vaulted him to the top of the 2000 NBA Draft, it’s what’s elevated him to a place of prominence as Kidd’s trusted sidekick. Martin trying to play without that raw energy is like a gunfighter bringing a water pistol to a duel.
“I put it on my shoulders,” he said.
This is a side of Martin we’d rarely seen before this season. A year ago, he would have sought exile in the trainer’s room, found a back exit, surely grumbled about forces conspiring against him. It was around the same time that he called out Keith Van Horn for delivering a Finals stinker as foul as the one he put up last night.
Last night, there was no hiding. There were no excuses, even if he had a damn good one coursing through his bloodstream. Just shrugged shoulders. Humbled words. And two long days of angst, chasing him to San Antonio.
“It was just a bad game at the wrong time,” Martin said, knowing it went beyond that, knowing better than anyone this was the worst game at the worst time.
