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Sad Deron is sad. Mad Deron is mad. Angry Nets fans are angry. Bad P.J. is bad. Desperate Nets are desperate |
Crunch time never felt like more of an accurate term. With their proverbial backs crunched up against a proverbial wall of spikes (the Bulls/elimination game), the Brooklyn Nets need a real (non-proverbial) win later tonight at the Barclays Center in order to keep their fleeting chances at a 1st-round win alive. After the triple-OT debacle on Saturday and disappointing loss on Thursday, the Nets–who won this series' 1st game in more-than-convincing fashion–are just one more slip-up away from a long spring/summer filled with golf, vacations, and beaches, but no basketball.
As nice as all that might sound to some of us New Yorkers and other Northeasterners that may want to escape the cold for awhile, I'd personally much rather have a few more games of playoff basketball, at least, and possibly another round of it. But that doesn't look likely at all right now.
In order to extend this series to seven games (with an all-important Game 7 in Brooklyn), the Nets would need to win both tonight and next Thursday night at the United Center. With this evening's matchup being tough enough for a battered, bruised, and demoralized Nets squad, just forcing a Game 6 would be an accomplishment in and of itself. The only silver lining for the Nets in their awful playoff predicament is that this type of extreme comeback has happened plenty of time before in the NBA, but maybe most importantly in baseball, when the Red Sox came back from 3-0 in the 2004 ALCS to beat the Yankees 4-3 in the series.
Sure, it's a different sport and much different circumstances, but the basic principles are there, so it's not completely impossible. However, some truly miraculous individual and team performances happened in that series to allow a Boston win and entry into the World Series. The question for the Nets is who is going to have the bloody sock?
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