This is what all that money was for.
In July, when Brooklyn sent shock waves across the NBA landscape by trading for past-their-prime stars Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, the goal wasn’t to have the league’s best regular season record. The combined $28 million owed Pierce and Garnett this season wasn’t about the first 82 games on the schedule.
Where the deal was intended to pay dividends was over the next several weeks, as the Nets embark on their second straight postseason journey since moving to Brooklyn. Last year’s jaunt was cut short at just seven games, thanks in large part to a monster Game Four effort from Chicago’s diminutive Nate Robinson that the Nets faithful would like to purge from memory.
In that series, the Nets had no deficit of talent. Instead, Brooklyn’s team was overmatched when it came to intensity and momentum.
Garnett and Pierce have produced some of the most memorable postseason moments in recent NBA history during their run with the Boston Celtics. They know what it is like to win a title.
For as good as Brooklyn stars Deron Williams and Joe Johnson are, they have been unable to will their teams to that level of competition during otherwise impressive careers. The Boston imports could finally light a fire under one of the game’s best backcourts that inspires them to greater heights.
This year, the Nets face the Toronto Raptors in the first round. The teams were evenly matched during regular season meetings, each winning two games apiece. T-Dot’s Kyle Lowry and Demar DeRozan may be the toughest backcourt match-up Williams and Johnson could have drawn. But with Garnett and Pierce pacing Brooklyn’s temperament, the most expensive roster in the league should prove to be too much for an over-achieving Raptors team.
Nets in seven.
Matt Spolar is a nearly 6-foot-1 journalist with a middling high school basketball career who is sure the Nets win thanks to team’s top-tier guards.
