With 32 seconds left in Game Five, Heat sharpshooter Ray Allen rose up to sink a three-pointer from the left corner and finally give Miami the lead it had been clawing for in the game’s final minutes.
Nets Coach Jason Kidd took a time out. A basket on the next Brooklyn possession would tie the game or take back the lead. A miss could give Miami the opportunity to put the game out of reach he next time down the floor.
So what happened on the next possession? Nets guard Shaun Livingston got the ball, dribbled to the opposite side of the floor and began backing down 10-time All-Star Dwayne Wade. After making some inroads, he turned as he leapt toward the basket, and clanked the ball off the backboard and rim. No good.
Is this the best shot the Nets could have gotten with the season in the balance?
Flashback to two days earlier: with 57 seconds left in Game Four, Chris Bosh rose up to sink a three-pointer (right corner) and give Miami a three-point lead. Joe Johnson, isolated on the left side with 10-time All-Star LeBron James draped all over him, threw up a step-back runner that barely grazed the front of the rim. No good.
Again: is this the best shot the Nets could have gotten?
As Brooklyn sails into the offseason, these are the moments that young coach Jason Kidd must look back on, analyze, and try to learn from. He was handed a team loaded with veteran play-makers who need only an inch to get off a shot. But is that a reason to not try to create as much space as possible? Is his end-of-game coaching style to simply isolate a player and let him go one-on-one? As a former point guard, has he lost so much confidence in Nets franchise point guard Deron Williams that he no longer feels D-Will should handle the ball or try to create a shot for his teammates with the game on the line?
After just one season as an NBA coach, Kidd may not know the answers to these questions yet. This was a trial by fire, though strange timing for a team that was trying so desperately to win now. With all summer to review the final minutes of the last two games of the 2013–14 season, Nets fans can expect Kidd to have a clearer sense of who he is as a coach, and Brooklyn should be the better for it.
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.
