5, 4, 3...Abort! Abort!
Spurs 99, Nets 76
Game 40
File
Kerry Kittles scores a season-high 30
points (24 of them came in the first half), but the Nets' big men did
not show up. Martin, in fact, was suffering from back spasms. The Nets
were outscored 52 - 18 in the paint. What was an exciting game for 3 quarters
(the Nets were only down by 7 at the end of the 3rd, and had held a lead
for much of the 1st half) became a blowout in the 4th, thanks to good
Spurs defense and bad shooting by the Nets frontcourt.
• Box
Score
Nets Record: 21 - 19
Home Record: 12 - 8
Away Record: 9 - 11
Division Record: 7 - 1
Conf. Record: 13 - 9
Other Game Reviews
Nets High Men:
• Points: Kerry
Kittles, 30.
• Assists: Richard
Jefferson, 10.
• Rebounds: Kenyon
Martin, 11.
• Steals: Kidd
and Kittles each had 2.
• Turnovers: Kidd
and Jefferson each had 4.
• Blocks: Kenyon
Martin, 2.
• FG Percentage: Kerry
Kittles, 68.4% (13 - 19).
Nets Team Stats:
• FG Percentage: 37.2%
• FT Percentage: 68.8%
• Rebounds: 38
• Rebound Differential: -11
• Turnovers: 15
• Turnover Differential: +3
• Bench
points: 9
• Bench
points Differential: -9
• Steals:
7
• Blocks:
4
• Points
in the Paint: 18
• Double-Doubles:
0
• Triple-Doubles:
0
The Kidd Effect:
• Nets Players in Double Digit Scoring:
2
• Nets Fast Break Points: 13
• Kidd's FG Percentage: 47.1%
(8 - 17).
• Scoring
Differential Kidd in the game: -31
• Scoring
Differential Kidd out (Kittles/Harris at PG: +9;
Planinic at PG: -1): +8
• Double-Doubles
this Season: 14
• Triple
Doubles this Season: 6
• Career
Triple Doubles: 56
Nets Media
Bergen
Record | Nets
Newark Star-Ledger
| Nets
Newsday
| Nets
NY
Daily News | NBA
NY
Post | Nets
NY
Times | Pro Basketball
YES
Network | Nets
Nets Team Pages
CNNSI.com
| Nets
ESPN.com
| Nets
FoxSports
| Nets
NBA.com | Nets
Sportsline.com
| Nets
Spurs Media
San
Antonio Express-News
Full Frontcourt Failure
Stats. Don't you just love them? They really put some zip in a paragraph. They really entertain the eye. They sure draw the reader in. Sigh. Here are some:
• The Nets' starting frontcourt of Jason Collins, Kenyon Martin, and Richard Jefferson scored a total of 16 points, as compared to the Spurs' frontcourt of Rasho Nesterovic, the famous Tim Duncan, and Bruce Bowen, who scored a combined 52. That's a...wow, that's a big disparity.
• The Nets' starting frontcourt shot 4 - 24 from the field. You are reading that correctly. That's 16.7%. The Spurs' starting frontcourt shot 21 for 41, or 51.2% from the field, like a real frontcourt should. Guys who play in the 5, 4, and 3 positions in basketball are usually very tall and heavy and strong, and they usually get easy looks at the basket, resulting in dunks or whatnot, which usually gives them a rather high shooting percentage.
• The Nets as a team scored 18 points in the paint – the paint being the area the frontcourt traditionally patrols – and the Spurs as a team scored 52 there.
• In rebounding, largely regarded as the frontcourt's specialty, the Nets were outclassed by 11.
Mitigating factors: Kenyon Martin struggled through this game bravely, we supposed, with back spasms. He only played 33 minutes. Forward Malik Rose was out for the Spurs with a right ankle sprain, but that really worked out okay for San Antonio.
Were the Nets Ever "In" This?: You bet. Thanks to the most spectacular ball Kerry Kittles has played all year. At the end of the first half, Kittles had scored 24 points off 10 - 13 shooting. The Nets were up by a single digit here, in what was a fast-paced little contest. You glance at Richard Jefferson's stats and see the weird number "10" in his assist column. Why is that? Well, passes to Kittles. The Spurs, you could say, "made an adjustment" in the second half, and Bruce Bowen, who Kittles had singed nicely for 24 minutes, started to really get in Kerry's face...and he was occasionally joined by Spurs center Rasho Nesterovic. Hedo Turkoglu started banging down 3-pointers. The Nets went down at the end of the 3rd, but only by 7. At the start of the 4th, Manu Ginobili scored 8 of the Spurs' 9 points. For the entire 4th, the Nets would only score 12 points, and 3 of them came after Byron Scott had thrown in the towel. Coach Scott was so desperate, he went to a "Hack-a-Bowen," and then a "Hack-a-Rasho" strategy with 4 minutes to go and the Nets down by 19. Bowen and Rasho managed a respectable-for-them 6 - 8 from the stripe during this disheartening stretch. We call that "stepping up" in the sports world. What do you call what the Nets did?
We Got X-ed
Potential Peaked - We have seen the peak of Jason Collins' skills as a player, you could argue. He is not going to get much better, is he? Isn't this his 3rd year in the league? Hasn't he gotten plenty of minutes? Well, 1 point in a game and 0 - 6 from-the-field shooting will not do. Collins, a big likable, hustling guy – we here at Joe love the sort of things sports folks fail to describe, instead tagging them as "intangibles" as if that will cover it, and Collins provides some, specifically, sacrificing his body and getting charges called on opposing players. But "Twin" is strictly a back-up center, at best. He has not proved himself as a starter. Didn't he once, long ago, last year? Enough to keep Alonzo Mourning in the second string at the start of this season? Collins is either ill, injured, generally worn-down, or simply not the man the Nets need in the middle.
Ward Cleaver - Kerry Kittles didn't just score 30 points in 42 minutes, he also had 2 steals. I could swear they were both off the Spurs' new back-up PG Charlie Ward. The Nets wanted this guy, remember? Well, they could still use him. The Nets have been going with the combined team of Lucious Harris and Kerry Kittles to spell Kidd at PG, and believe it or not, they performed well tonight, actually leading their team to +9 in points when they were the distributors, but is that a long-term solution? Pack didn't get off the bench, and Planinic usually only gets work on Garbage Nights.
Backcourt Burden - Jason Kidd scored 21 points, and shot 8 - 17. Pretty good, eh? Get this: the Nets' starting backcourt (uh, that's 2 guys!) combined for 51 points, which works out to 67% of the Nets' total. Kidd only made 3 assists tonight however, and under his PG helm, the Nets went a plainly disastrous -31 in points scored. Kidd's passes were more than a bit off this evening, but this negativity is mainly due to the Frontcourt Failure, as I hope I've made clear at this point. The best pass Kidd threw went to Kerry Kittles very early in the game, a low lead pass that Kerry still had to scoop down to retrieve. This game was the only one I've seen in which I very nearly groaned when I saw Kidd returning to it. Yeah, he still had those 21 points, didn't shoot badly at all, but he never seemed completely in sync, in charge.
Not Facts, But Opinions - The Nets, at best, are shooting for second best team in the NBA this year, the 3rd year in a row they'll be in contention for that spot. I can kid myself and imagine they can get around Indiana in the playoffs – the playoffs are different, the regular season can only indicate potential – remember the dismantling the Nets performed on Detroit in the 2003 post-season? But I can't kid myself that the Nets could get past any of the top 4 teams in the West in a 7 game series. Not Dallas. Not the Lakers. Not the Kings. Not the Spurs. Even when the Nets seemed fairly deep, they couldn't do it. And now they seem very, very thin. They get zilch from the bench. Our centers, sadly, are unable. Rodney Rogers has his best game of the season against the likes of the Washington Wizards. Zoran Planinic isn't ready, if he'll ever be. Lucious Harris has been having a bad shooting season. A-Train has been injured. Only a series of honest-to-God accidents of fate will get this team a ring this year. Don't think these players don't know it.
Five on Two
Five Spurs got in double digit scoring, to a paltry two of the Nets (Kidd and Kittles). Tony Parker (11 points), Hedo Turkoglu (18 points, 4 - 7 from the 3-point arc), Bruce Bowen (15 points, only half of what he allowed Kerry Kittles), Rasho Nesterovic (16 points) and Tim Duncan (21 points, 17 rebounds) were "the men." Jason Collins (1 points), Kenyon Martin (7 points, 11 rebounds), and Richard Jefferson (8 points, 10 assists), not to mention their back-ups Aaron Williams (4 points) and Rodney Rogers (4 points), were not.
- Champagne
Archive | Backlash | Bio | Calendar | Champagne's Blog | Diatribe | Game x Game | History | Home | Joe Netsfan's Blog | Media | Opponents | Players | Playoffs | Search | Specials
© 2003, 2004 Shawn Belschwender and Michael Kozlowski
