Well its that time that we all have been looking forward to since Sunday, when the Nets couldnt find away to put away the Bad Boys from Mo town, its game 7. The Nets have to find away to pull out a victory on the road or their season is over. Here is how they go about trying to get that victory.... 1) Create tempo- The Nets have to find away to get out in the open court. And create some easy baskets of their defense & forcing turnovers. The Nets need to keep this game at an up & down pace for most of the 48 minutes. The Nets are the best fastbreak team in basketball. If the Nets are running that usually means that they are playing great defense & the Pistons arent scoring, which means that the crowd isnt going to have anything to cheer about.The Nets creating tempo will keep the crowd out of the game,which favors the Nets big time. 2) Limit Turnovers-No turnover is a good turnover, but the style of play the Nets use, they are going to turn the ball over at a pretty high rate most nights,so The Nets are going to have to limit the kind of turnovers they make tonight. The Nets can live with turning the ball over when they are in an up & down game, trying to get out in the open court. But the kind of turnovers the Nets cant live with are the ones when they are not on the break. They can not commit turnovers when bringing the ball up after Pistons made baskets, or in the half-court set against the Pistons defense. These type of turnovers lead to easy baskets for the Pistons, which limits our edge in Fastbreak points. 3) Make Perimeter Shots- The Nets are going to have to make their fare share of Perimeter shots inorder to win this game. If Kittles, Harris, Kidd,Rogers & Jefferson dont shoot the ball well in the half court against the Pistons defense the Nets are going to have a hard time scoring tonight. I think the Pistons main goal tonight is to make sure that they get back on defense, which means the Nets may have to play alot in the Half-court tonight. Gotta make shots! 4) Free Throw Shooting - The Nets missed 3 big free throws in the 4th quarter of game 6. And missed countless big free throws in game 5. They can not do this tonight, they have to get to the line & convert on all the easy freebies. 5) Rebounding- I have said all series you have to make the Pistons be a one man rebounding team which is still the correct method imo. But the Nets are still going to have to put an effort into at least containing Ben Wallace on the boards as well. Ben Wallace had 20 rebs(9 were on the offensive end), thats too much. They have to keep been Wallace to about 15 rebounds while keeping everyone else off the boards. I think while boxing out Ben Wallace, the Nets bigs(like Aaron Williams & Jason Collins) need to face guard him. That will be their best way of keeping him off the boards. 6)The intangibles- There are a few other things that most happen for the Nets to get a win tonight, so Iam calling this the intangibles. The 1st is, the Nets have to take one of the Pistons backcourt players out of the game. The Pistons still get a large bulk of their offense from their backcourt, so the Nets are going to have to shut down either Billups or Hamilton. 2nd thing is Kenyon Martin must stay out of foul trouble. The Nets can not survive if K-Mart is on the bench long periods of time in foul trouble. He is the teams' best rebounder, & low post option. The Nets need about 40 minutes from him tonight. 3rd thing Richard Jefferson must carry us imo. He is the one player the Pistons can't guard in the Half-court or the open court. In this series the only person that can stop RJ has been RJ. He shuts himself down when he settles for the jumper to much. And when he doesnt make the open shot & free throws. Rj needs to go to the basket alot tonght & get to the free throw about 8-10 times tonight. And make your free throws RJ. All & All, I think we need to use our playoff experince that we have had over past 3 seasons together to get us over the hump of having to win on the road. And limit any big Pistons' runs. Do not give the Pistons' crowd reason to cheer any louder than they already are. And Make some jumpshots please. And hopefully the Nets can pull out what I expect to be a close game in the 4th.
Great stuff Henacy, I think the most key and important thing you've mentioned is the 3rd intangible. K-Mart and Kidd are playing well but as foreseen are not at their best or complete selves. They'd have to rely on RJ who is healthy right now. He has the ability to lead the scoring load right now. He just has to be consistent and play easy, meaning go for his almost surefire drives and inside shots. That jumper's gonna need to be on for them to win. He has to play well without the ball a lot of the time, for they'll probably mostly be looking out for K-Mart since he's such a powerhouse. The biggest factor again though I feel again, is that they need to get a big lead and keep it as far as possible early in the game so that it'd be hard to catch up. Who knows when the Pistons will simply kill them in little time? Good defense? They have all of that. So they need to be aware all the time and play smart, restricted, meaning strictly simple basketball, meaning always close together so passes won't be intercepted so easily, things like that, the easy fundamentals and intangibles.
Man this should be a good game,but a tough one for the Nets it will be hard for them to win this game on the road they say that like the home team almost always wins game 7's but I think the Nets can pull it off.They will have to do all the things that Henacy said they will also have to stop Rip Hamilton,he was a huge reason why the Pistons one Game 6,i think they could contain him by putting RJ on him that should limit his points.
great pts hen. the nets need to come out hot in the first quarter like they have in games 3 and 4 at home. if we can get hot in the first and end the first Q with a 30-ish point output then our defense can really sink in. we have to win the 5's. first 5minutes and last 5minutes of each quarter we need to control. we need to start out hot and player good all around basketball to start each Q and we need to close out each Q in the final 5min. if you can control and win the 5's then your chances of winning are extremely high. we did win game 5 in detroit which, at that time, was a must win game so our guys know what we can get a win in detroit. the win wasn't the prettiest, but it was a good mental win. if the crowd is taken out of the game early, then its a 5v5 game, not a 5v6 game. when jason is out, kerry/lu need to protect that ball with their life. james and hunter have shown that they like to pressure the ball when jason is on the bench. if the pressure our backcourt and create to's,then that will fuel their crowd up even more which is what we dont want. this game could be a game where players are playing for a contract or to stay with this team. whether we win today, lose today or lose sometime down the road if we do win, there will/must be changes to our team. guys like debo/slay/brandon,even maybe collins have to show management that they still belong here and that they can help this team. we all know the debo hasn't been the 6th man of the year since he has been in jersey. he is the first guy that comes to mind when i talk about this. i still think he is gone if he plays bad or good, but he is playing for his next team to have confidence in him. guys like brandon and slay may not get playing time, but they are young guys who might be attractive to some team(s). you can really make a case for every player on our roster except kidd/rj/kmart b/c they are our big three and they have proven themselves over the yrs and this yr, they are above everyone else. so maybe with guys thinking this could be my last game in a nets uniform and want to show their next team what they can do or show rod that they are still valuable to this team that they want to stay will maybe increase their performance and help us get a W. overall, i believe we can win tonight. we have to get a lead early and make big runs. everyone has to be mentally into the game and give it their all and we should be fine. this team has made records for this franchise and has done things that no other team has done for this franchise and i expect their list of accomplishments to continue tonight. we are a very close group and as long as we communicate on defense and execute on offense, we have a shot. we want to go into the fourth Q with a lead or being by a little where we still have a chance to win. thats all you can ask for on the road, is a chance to win in the 4th. hopefully the ref's won't decide the outcome of this game, please let the players play. if we lose, i rather lose to the pistons than the pistons and the refs. im sure pistons fans feel the same way. like i said before, whoever advances to meet the pacers is going to have it tough because both teams are banged up and have injury problems. this series was more evenly matched than many ignorant people believed. i've enjoyed the series and hopefully we can pull a win out. if not, then i won't be upset because i know we would've lost to the pistons who are a quality team. hopefully i won't be saying that a few hours from now.
Great points as usual Henacy. Now here are my takes on this one and some agreements with your points. 1. They have to get to work early in the game. If you can notice, the Pistons has the tendency to start slow. They need to take advantage of this. 2. WIth regards to number 1, they should maintain the tempo that they've dictated. They should run to prevent the bad boys from setting up their half court defense. 3. KMart and the big men should stay out of foul trouble. We got lucky that we won in game 5 even without our big men but that would be a different case in a game 7. We need KMart to play 40+ minutes on this one. 4. Let Kidd play his game. How? By making shots. Kidd will be making those passes, be sure to make it coz once Kidd gets some assists going on, his confidence will go up and so is his shooting. 5. Our shooters. Lu should score 10+ points off the bench and Kerry should score 15-20 points. They need to open up the space inside for KMart. 6. Get Sheed to foul trouble early. This will be KMart's job. 7. Richard Jefferson should have a great game. This game will be won by the team who's Richard played better. 8. Help out Kidd in defense. Rip is playing Miller- like. He's running all around those screens to be open from Kidd. Help defense! 9. Make Billups shoot bad shots. He's a streak bad shooter. He misses in bunches. 10. Contain Big Ben to less than 15 boards. Keep him off the offensive boards. If the Nets play their game, they can win it. They are a KMart foul trouble, Kidd's bad game away from elimination. RJ will be big in this game believe me. The greatest keys to this game are Kidd and KMart. It will be hard and it may get ugly. Nets win by less than 10 points.
Nets know how crucial a closing game is. They have been there before and they have the experience. Nets take this one by 4
I really hope to see Nets lose,my friend has rubbed Nets success in my face for 2 years and I've had enough from it and i hope to get atleast 20 points in JBB's tournament ,Detroit by 1 (63-62)
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Magic Johnson:</div><div class="quote_post">Would that score in a double OT because of defense or bad shots CV?</div> Defense leads to bad shots so I would say both. Defense moreso.
wow, its minutes before tip-off and im starting to get nervous. i think i've been phsyching myself out about good things coming to an end. ah! throw the ball up already! gl to both squads ps: about time espn puts on a nets/pistons game. they need to stop sucking the west's ass ps2: about time ben has his fro out! well after 1st Q, everything..EVERYTHING went Pistons way. down by 7 seems down a lot, but if you think about how the momentum and how bad our shot selections were and rj getting 2 fouls, its not that bad. not lookin at the score you would think pistons would be up by 10-12. time to start attacking the rim edit again. down by 12 @ half. once again everything went det's way. we are usually good at making adjustments at halftime every since frank took over for byron. just hope the inexperience of his head coaching doesnt come into play. also, rodney has to stop chucking shots up when hes close to the basket. he is playing like he is a mouse inside an elephants body.
Wow, I didn't expect this. Detroit by 21. I predicted that Detroit would protect homecourt, but not like this. Better luck next year Nets.
Wow, we got rocked. I stopped watching in the 3rd. Next year guys, next year... What a terrible shooting series for Kidd. You gotta give credit to Detroit's defense. Wierd thing is, we had a 7 game series, and our main guys were puttin up sub-par numbers
Well what can I say right now, I am extemely disappointed. Probably the most dissapointing loss Ive seen in my 10plus years as a Nets fan(well getting swept by the Bulls in 98 was pretty dissapointing too).Hopefully Rob Thorn & Nets ownership watched this game very closely, because this game pretty much sumed up the reason why the Nets have been a championship contender the last 3 years but never a champion. 1) We cant shoot period- When the Nets go back & look over game 6 & 7, & see how many open jumpshots they missed, how many free throws they missed. You can not go 3-16 from 3pt line in a big game its just that simple. The Nets have been living with Kerry Kittles being their only real perimeter shooter for the last 2 season after the trade of Van Horn. And that just doesnt work, Kerry Kittles is way to streaky to ever count on him in a big game. The Nets need some shooters. 2) A bunch of wasted big bodies - The Nets roster is filled with a bunch of PF(some of which try to play center) Jason Collins, Aaron Williams, Rodney Rogers are all useless against big front lines. The Nets need to find some legitmate size that can produce in the low post & on the boards. I cant completely knock Nets mangement for this they have tried to add size to the front line over the years Zo, Mutombo even Todd Macchulluh(misspelled) a few years back, but they all were injury prone. I think the Nets need to be extremely selective this off season in chosing what bigman will be on this team. The Center & back bigman spots have been the death of this team every single run toward a championship. We have to keep this core group together & build around(RJ, Martin, & Kidd). This lost hurts but it showed that the Nets need to make a good amount of changes inoreder to compete with these new upstart teams like the Pistons, & Pacers. And the East want be getting any easier because you are going to have to add the Heat & Bucks to teams that can compete for the title in the east. So we have to make changes now, so we can make sure we can get back our title. Congrats Pistons fans, you just beat the beast of the East, dont fumble it away by losing in the conference finals. The Nets Will Be Back,mark my words.
Man what a dissapinting game I expect a lot better from the Nets I didnt think they would go out like this.I think their main problem is:their offense, if they play a good transtion defense team most of the time their whole offense is shut down.So the Nets are basicly a one dimmensional team.
I am so disappointed right now. I don't know what to say. I'll speak my mind later on when the reality sinks in. BTW, Allnet. I see that you're viewing this thread. Give it to me. Congrats to the new Beast of the East. Watch your back. We'll be back next year. Hopefully Thorn will weave his magic again that enabled him to draft MJ for the Bulls and get the big three.
in all honesty, i think losing Game 6 at home was demoralizing for the Nets. you could see the fight dissappear from every player. no one stepped up to lead. all in all, good series. i'll remember the 3OT Game 5 even though it was a loss, since i was actually at the Palace. NJ definitely has some work to do. their weaknesses have been exposed and exploited.
