As we all know the Nets will need at least one road victory in order to pull this series out against the Pistons. They have two shots at that road victory, their 1st shot comes tonight in game 5. This is the one I think the Nets need to cash in on. If they lose tonight they may not get that 2nd chance to win on the road. Granted the Nets have been very impressive at home but you still never want to be faced with the possiblity of elimination. So losing tonight isnt the end of the world. But the Nets backs will be up against the wall if they lose. The Nets must find away to pull out the road victory. And this is how they do it imo...... They must take their Perimeter shot on the Road- The Nets had alot of confidence with their jumpshot at home. Kittles &Jefferson in game 3. And then in game 4 all the night shooters seemed to have alot of lift & confidence in thier shot. Now the Nets have to take that confidence in thier jumpshots on the road. With the Pistons being back home they will probably do a better job of slowing down the Nets open court game. That means Jefferson, Kittles, Harris, Kidd, & Rogers will have to make jumpers in the half court. Rebounds- Rebounds have clearly been a key to this series for the Nets. When they control the backboards they win, win they dont they lose. The Nets will have to continue to make the Pistons a one man rebounding team. I have always said Ben Wallace will get his no matter what. The Nets have to continue to keep the other Pistons off the boards. One thing with Ben tho. I think the Nets have to limit Ben Wallace's effort rebounds. Iam talking about those rebounds where he attacks the boards by getting 3 or 4 rebounds on the same Pistons possession. That type of effort gets the crowd in detroit started. The Nets want to keep them quiet as possible. So they must make Ben Wallace's 15 rebounds as quiet as possible. Keep Billups out of the game- Billups has seemed alot more comfortable at home than on the road. So the Nets need really focus on keeping him out of the game. If you keep Billups out the game you limit the open looks Prince & Hamilton get off his penetration. And you also limit the offensive put backs Ben Wallace gets from teams focusing on stopping Billups when he penetrates. So if you contain Billups, you contain alot of what the Pistons want to do on the offensive end. Nets Bigmen must stay out of foul trouble- The Nets bigs cant get in foul trouble on the road. It throws off the player rotation. The Nets have had a set bigman rotation in the playoffs. Jason Collins plays the 1st 5 minutes, then Rodney is the 1st big man off the bench replacing Collins. Rodney & K-Mart play the rest of the 1st quarter together on the frontline. Then we either go big by letting Aaron Williams sub in for RJ on the frontline. And move Rodney over to small forward. Giving us a frontline of Rodney, K-Mart, & A Will. Or we go with a smaller frontline of Aaron Williams, Rodney, & RJ early 2nd quarter. And most times at the end of the game Frank wants Rodney/JC to keep switching for offensive/Defensive. So any foul trouble may disrupt those subs. And may cost the Nets a victory in a close game. Limiing turnovers- Like I always said the Nets want to keep their turnovers in the 15-16 turoner range. If they get in that plus 20 area they start to get in trouble. I think if the Nets do all of these fairly well, with the confidence & momentum they have right now, I'm think they can pull off a close road victory. I think the most important things is to see how the Nets handle Pistons' runs. Every Home team goes on big runs during the playoffs. The Nets must absorb & limit those runs. And then counter them with runs of their own to quiet the crowd.
Nets get a huge road victory in 3OT Great Win, but the Nets had to win this game about 5 or 6 times. They missed way to many big free throws in the 4th quarter & all the overtimes. The Nets turned the ball over way to many times. They had 21 turnovers before regulation was over. All our bigs got in foul trouble, which almost cost us the game with no type of interior defense. Good thing RJ didnt get into foul trouble after the 3rd quarter or we would have been done. Brain Scalibrine saved the Nets a**. He shot the balll well all night & really shot the ball well in those OT's. Lucious Harris made a couple of big shots as well. Kerry Kittles had another solid output. And Kenyon Martin was a beast until he fouled out. The Nets did everything wrong but the one thing they did was keep their composure when everything went wrong.
The Nets are doing big things now. I left when the Pistons were up 1 in the 2nd overtime and didn't know they went to triple overtime till I watched inside the NBA. So I was lefted in the womb for the first time watching replays, and Scalibrine came up big for ya'll. I really though D town would get this, now their in danger of going home in their next game.
Triple OT, now that's something they all must've been tired. What were Kidd, RJ and K-Mart's stats? It's nice to hear that Harris was playing well, he needs to work on his consistency of hitting those open jumpers, he seems to be doing so as of late. Props and ups to Scalabrine, he works hard, same goes for A-Train, it's great when they play well. As for Kittles, I'm not very fond of him, but thanks for helping fuel the fire for the win.
