Can you feel the fever pitch? It’s building. The Nets’ magic number, with Cleveland, to clinch a playoff spot is 35. Any combo of Net victories and Cavs defeats equaling 35, puts New Jersey in the playoffs.
Of course, the tragic number for playoff elimination and lottery qualification is 17. Look at it this way, they rip off their next 12 victories, they’re three games under .500. With 25 games remaining, including last night’s home encounter with the road-awful Pistons, the smart money rested on a trip to the lottery. But even though the Nets admit they can dream playoffs, the post-season does not dominate their thoughts.
“I’m always looking for the positive,” said Jayson Williams, “but I think what we have to look for is spirit of don’t quit, guys playing through injuries, guys not just cashing it in.”
Last season, during the season’s end rush, players routinely checked the standings on a daily basis to play “if this, then that” and to see where they stood in reference to the eighth position. Now, if they do check, it’s merely to see if they’re still in the league.
“Basically, our goal is to go 25-0,” offered Keith Van Horn with a weak smile. “There’s no other way to think. That’s how big the hole we’ve dug is. Last year, I was always checking the papers to see where we were in relation to Miami, to a playoff spot. I don’t check this year. I gave that up a while ago. But I did last year because the race was so hotly contested.”
It went right down to the final game, when the Nets upended the Pistons and earned the right to be swept by the Bulls. But what remains now is mere hope. But the Nets still cling to that hope.
“I don’t think it’s out of the question so why not try to?” Van Horn added. “It’s a long shot, yeah, but we can’t just give up.”
And Williams said even the slightest show of improvement could be cause for optimism, maybe even cockiness.
“We got some guys here who are cocky. You watch, we win two, three in a row and they’ll be talking about it. I mean, they came out of the womb and said, ‘Don’t bother slapping me, Doc. I can do it myself,'” Williams said. “Me, I’m through predicting. I’m still carrying a big stick but I’m walking softly.”
If the Nets are to make any kind of a move that could bring them into position where they could start thinking about the playoffs (in truth, they shouldn’t even be thinking about that now as they are 15th in a 15-team conference) they might want to overtake the Bulls, 2 games ahead, before thinking about challenging for the eighth spot. But interim Don Casey said the team’s goal are even more simple than that. How simple? There are no goals.
“We don’t set anything. The goal is ‘tonight.’ The goal is ‘each game.’ I don’t put up, ‘We’ve got to win 20 of the next 25.’ If that happens, it happens,” Casey said. “The goal is to play well each game and to compete and if you do that then you have a chance to win games. If you don’t, then you’re nowhere.
“Now I know the motivational speakers might not like to hear that.”
But it is the truth. Kerry Kittles, for one, thinks that much of the Nets’ pathetic plight arose from the soaring expectations the team dragged into the season. They made the playoffs last year. They were going places this year. But the only place they went was the bottom.
“Look at my three years here,” Kittles said. “They were supposed to be rebuilding years. The first year was really tough. But it was expected. then last year, I think we overachieved. No one expected us to do as well as we did. And people did start to notice the New Jersey Nets. So a lot more was expected this year than should have been.
“Now, we have 25 games to go and I think what we’re really shooting for is respectability. We want to finish strong so that when people look back at us, they’ll say, ‘They fought their way back from a rough start, fought their way through injuries to finish strong,” Kittles said. “We can’t think about ‘playoffs.’ We’ve put enough pressure on ourselves this year. We just have to think about finishing strong and being respectable.”
An the longer they can avoid the tragic number, the better.
“Right now, we’re just trying to get some momentum to make a run,” Kendall Gill said. “When we get a couple, then we can figure out where we’re going, not where we’d like to go.”
