The things Brooklynites throw away will never cease to amaze me.
I’ve feasted on delicious childhood birthday cakes discarded on the sidewalk because some poor confectioner misspelled “Grayson” or “Tomas.” I’ve drank like a king from a half-full bottle of vintage vino because somebody’s palette detected the wine stopper let a wisp of air ruin the bottle. My nest is decorated entirely by pillows with birds stitched on them, thanks to a market surplus.
I certainly never found such a treasure trove back when I used to fly south for the winter.
So maybe it’s a Brooklyn thing, and maybe that explains how the Nets took a perfectly good cakewalk to claim the last spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs and almost tossed it away like a day-old egg roll.
True, I should be happy that in the end our boys made the playoffs for the third year in a year row. But if not for Indiana losing late Wednesday night, Brooklyn dropping four of its last seven games and failing to claim the eighth seed wouldn’t have just been some run-of-the-mill meltdown that crushes the hopes of a franchise and its fans.
First off, the Nets were one of the few teams in the 15-squad Eastern Conference that was actually trying to make the playoffs this season.
Perusing the standings in that Post I found blowing down the street, the top six seeds in the East, ending with Milwaukee, are the only teams to have consistently played like they were supposed to compete for a title (besides our Nets, of course). After that, the Celtics — which locked up the seven seed — traded their top player, Rajon Rondo, in the middle of a season that featured Evan Freaking Turner playing heavy minutes at point guard. That just doesn’t happen on a team that really wants to win.
And the Pacers, who nearly beat out the Nets for the final spot? This is a team that basically lost All-World Paul George for the season, and let banged-up George Hill take his sweet time before finally joining the team in December. Even my bird brain knows President Larry Bird was looking past this season and sizing up the upcoming draft class. And yet, even that crippled franchise was almost able to limp past the Nets (the NBA’s most expensive team, mind you) like my one-footed buddy Stubby stumbling home behind of me after a night of throwing back shots and doin’ the pigeon in Freddy’s Backroom.
Then there are the truth-bombs lobbed this week by former Net Paul Pierce, who described his time in Brooklyn as “horrible” in an interview with ESPN.
“It was just the guys’ attitudes there,” he said. “They were vets who didn’t want to play and didn’t want to practice. I was looking around saying, ‘What’s this?’ ”
The lizard-like creature known appropriately as The Truth stored up some extra venom for D-Will: “Before I got there, I looked at Deron as an MVP candidate. But I felt once we got there, that’s not what he wanted to be. He just didn’t want that.”
It’s possible, now that these Nets were able to eke out a playoff berth, that Pierce’s comments are the kick in the ass that guys like D-Will and (presumably) Joe Johnson needed to right the ship. And, indeed, you’ll remember I even predicted that Brook Lopez’s size and scoring prowess could sneakily give the Nets a fighting chance against the No. 1–seeded Atlanta Hawks. But after watching this team fail to show up in the final week of the season, with everything on the line, The Truth’s airing of grievances feels more like pouring out a Thunderbird on an open grave (a pigeon funeral tradition, for those unfamiliar).
Despite my pessimism, you probably find me celebrating Brooklyn’s ticket to the postseason with my own bottles of ’Bird this weekend. But whenever this train wreck eventually screeches to a halt, I hope the Nets brass finally decides to do some spring cleaning at Barclays and dump its overpriced trash somewhere far from Atlantic Ave.
By the way, I’m back off breadcrumbs (doctor’s orders), so stop throwing them at the bottom of the stoop. They attract rats.
