One half of Brooklyn’s back court looks ready to take on the world. The other half is a mystery.
After a 20-point showing against Philadelphia on March 11, shooting star Joe Johnson has been a curious case for the last two weeks. He hit just 36.8 percent from the field in four games and sat out another two — the first with the same sore left heel that has bugged him throughout the season, the second with a newly sore right quad.
After receiving those platelet-rich plasma injections last month, point guard Deron Williams is playing like the All-Star he is paid to be. But Johnson is in fact the most expensive player on the Nets, and his stumbles with just 11 games left before the playoffs are troubling.
Joe has been up-and-down — okay, mostly down — all season. But he has come up huge when it mattered, hitting clutch shot after clutch shot as time expired.
Those huge baskets haven’t been made in a vacuum. During a February barn-burner against Milwaukee in which Johnson hit a game-tying three in regulation and a buzzer-beater in overtime, “Iso Joe” shot 10–18 and put up 24 points. The game before that he went 10–19 with 26 points against the Nuggets.
That December buzzer-beater in double-overtime against the Pistons? Joe led all scorers with 28 point on 12–22 shooting. The game before he had 23 on 50 percent shooting. The second-overtime winner against the Wizards in January? He made half of his shots in that game for 18 points. The contest before, he had torched the formidable Oklahoma City Thunder for 33.
Point is: Joe isn’t just going to hobble off the bench to hit a game-winner. He needs to be healthy and feeling it to give the Nets the boost they will likely need with their season on the line. Whether he can get to that point over the next month is the Nets’ burning question.
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.
