CHARLOTTE – Maybe the season would not have gone totally up in flames. But put it this way – an undermanned Bobcats team that was playing with guys only NBA diehards and fantasy geeks know had doused the Nets with gasoline and were devilishly flicking matches at their shoes.
So after a timeout with 8.2 seconds left and the Nets down two points, Jason Kidd went for the win with micro-seconds on the clock. He launched from beyond top left side of the 3-point arc. He knew the result.
“Short shot,” Kidd said.
But there was hope.
“Tar Heel intervention,” coach Lawrence Frank said.
Vince Carter exploded with a spectacular high-rise effort, grabbed the ball and flushed it two-handed, over-his head, landing on the floor as the buzzer sounded.
That dunk gave the Nets extra life and allowed Carter to cram 10 of his 40 points in the overtime of a 113-107 victory over the Bobcats for a move back into seventh place in the Eastern playoff race.
“I was in the right place at the right time,” said Carter (13-of-20 shooting, four assists, five rebounds). “I just tried to throw it in before time ran out.”
A loss here might have been “crippling,” admitted Kidd (five points, 15 assists, 10 rebounds, one very big, but fortunate, miss).
Instead, the victory, which featured the best game of rookie Josh Boone’s embryonic career (he shot a perfect 10-of-10 and scored 21), pushed the Nets (32-38) into a tie for seventh with Orlando (32-38) – the Nets hold a tie-breaker via conference record. They are a half-game ahead of Indiana and 1½ ahead of the Knicks.
On paper, this was supposed to be the Nets all the way. Charlotte was without four of its top six scorers – Emeka Okafor, Gerald Wallace, Raymond Felton and Sean May, to assorted injuries. So Matt Carroll stepped up and scored 27 points, Walter Herrmann added 20 and Brevin Knight, who always tortures the Nets, had 15 – hitting a 19-footer off a high screen roll at :08.2 of regulation that the Nets are just about now arriving to cover.
That set up the desperation situation.
“I knew it was short. But it was straight,” Kidd said of his shot. “When 15 [Carter] rose above everybody else, it was at the end to finish, and he did a great job.”
Said Charlotte coach Bernie Bickerstaff: “Vince just followed the ball. That’s what great players do.”
Carter’s play – his game-long play – was part of special individual efforts from the Nets. Richard Jefferson (16 points) was superbly aggressive, getting to the line repeatedly, where he was 10-of-10, including four FTs in the final :56.5 of regulation that kept the Nets on the ‘Cats’ heels.
Antoine Wright had seven points in the fourth quarter and overtime. And there was Boone.
“Josh Boone was phenomenal,” said Carter.
Boone, who got started quickly, running four pick and rolls with former UConn mate Marcus Williams in the second quarter, was flawless offensively. His 10-of-10 was three shots short of the Net team record: 13-of-13 by Roy Hinson.
Boone dunked off a Jefferson feed at 2:33 of the fourth to make it 90-90, one of seven fourth-quarter ties as the regulation end game became a “can you match this?” affair before Knight set the stage for Carter.