Game 65 Recap: 76ers 105, Nets 87

Goodbye Prudential Center and as Chris Christie said, good riddance.

Well, that was a fitting end to the Nets’ extremely unsuccessful New Jersey existence. An extremely undermanned Nets squad stayed close throughout with the playoff-bound 76ers but just faded away late. The final score was an aberration for how this game played out much of the night in the last time the New Jersey Nets, or any other team for that matter, played a game in the state of New Jersey itself. It was a very emotional night at the Prudential Center as the team honored a bunch of former Nets at the half-time, some of which have passed on, have fallen on hard times, or are even in playoff situations with other teams.

Back to the game. Just needed a win or Milwaukee loss to clinch the 8th-seed in the East (they got both by the way), Philly raced out of the gates to a big 25-11 lead in the 1st quarter looking like a team that didn’t want to just back into the playoffs. However, the Nets didn’t want to roll over in their last home game in New Jersey and fought themselves back into the game in the 3rd quarter, cutting the 76er lead to one at the 3:44 mark of the period on a Gerald Wallace jumper.

Wait, you didn’t think that the Nets would be able to sustain that intensity for the rest of the game right? Well, if you thought that then you would be wrong. By the end of the 3rd, Philly had built a 76-68 cushion and held onto that lead for the last 12 minutes of the game until blowing it completely open in the waning minutes of the Nets’ New Jersey experience. Truthfully, what more could you expect from a team missing so many key players due to injury.

As always with this team, there was a lot negative to last night’s game but there was a silver lining as well. First off, I think we’ve found our replacement for the extremely unreliable Sundiata Gaines and his name is Armon Johnson. The Nets’ recent call-up from the D-League scored 10 points in 23 of play off the bench last night but his best contributions couldn’t be quantified in the box score. He played great defense on Lou Williams and Jrue Holiday (combined for 9-24 shooting), ran the offensive sets well without mistakes (just one turnover), and even picked up the intensity and effort of his fellow teammates.

Some other observations I had from the game: The Prudential Center was basically packed last night and it was great to be in the building with a lot of people who were actually rooting for the Nets as opposed to the other team, even if it didn’t help the team win…Anthony Morrow’s stat-line: 1-5 shooting for four points with a -14 +/-. He’s been terrible for like the last two weeks and I hope it doesn’t carry into next year in Brooklyn as well. Ammo is a crucial part of this team and when he’s on, he’s nearly unstoppable on offense…Johan Petro made more than 50% of his shots, I think that whole “world coming to an end” thing must be correct now…The 76ers’ starting center, rookie Nikola Vucevic, played only the first two minutes of the game and was never to be seen from again. I haven’t heard if that was due to injury of not but it’s the only reasonable explanation…Evan Turner’s crossover-and-jumper move was one of the nastiest non-dunk plays I’ve seen all year. I know he was a top-5 pick and all but he is pretty underrated as a scorer in this league and can be a nice piece for this Philly team going forward.

Looking Ahead
The official last game of the “New Jersey Nets” is Thursday night north-of-the-border against the fellow lottery-bound Toronto Raptors. Also, goodbye Prudential Center, I don’t think I’ll be seeing you ever again.