Wednesday, May 28, 2003
New Jersey has a 10-day break before opening at Dallas or San Antonio.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- Rick Carlisle played for the New Jersey Nets 13 years ago, scoring one basket all season as his career came to a dead end with a dead-end franchise.
"Back in those days, people said it could never be done," the Detroit Pistons' coach said. "The Nets could never be a contender.
"But Rod Thorn has done a great job of drafting and getting the right coach and making the right trades. This team is poised, and I believe they've got a real chance against whoever comes out of the West."
While Carlisle and his Pistons headed home Sunday, general manager Thorn, coach Byron Scott and the rest of the Nets began plotting a return trip to the NBA Finals.
New Jersey completed a sweep of Detroit on Saturday night, winning its 10th consecutive playoff game to retain the Eastern Conference title.
"They're clearly on a mission," Carlisle said. "And I would not bet against them."
New Jersey has a 10-day break -- an eternity for a basketball team -- before opening at Dallas or San Antonio on June 4.
Better team
The Nets were swept in the finals by the Los Angeles Lakers last year and will again be the underdog, but this year they are more talented and mature and less star-struck.
"I could see when I walked out at the Staples Center last year, when I was looking at the guys' faces, that we were happy to be there," Scott said. "This year is totally different.
"The maturity of Kenyon Martin and Richard Jefferson, Jason Kidd being there last year and getting a chance to go back. Everything is different. The feeling getting there this season is a little more satisfying, but also knowing that the job is not done."
The long layoff will give Kidd more than sufficient time to recover from his twisted ankle, the only scary moment for the Nets in Game 4.
Kidd grabbed a rebound and his right foot landed on the foot of Pistons center Ben Wallace. The Nets' point guard lay on the court in pain while a hushed crowd rose.
But Kidd stayed in the game and immediately started a 13-1 fourth-quarter run that put the game away.
"It doesn't bother me," Kidd said. "We'll get treatment until it's 100 percent."
Long wait
But even that won't take 10 days. As Scott is discovering, the only drawback to being so dominant in the playoffs is that it leaves way too much time to kill.
"Five or six days is enough," Scott said. "Ten days is probably too much time. You never experience anything like this during the regular season. It's going to mess up your timing."
Scott plans to pass the time by taking in his first hockey game. The New Jersey Devils open the Stanley Cup finals at home Tuesday night, the first time in nine years two teams from the same arena have competed in the NBA and NHL finals in the same year.
But how will he manage his own team?
"A little bit of everything," Scott said. "We're going to have a couple of days off, we're going to go hard, then we're going to go not-so-hard, then we're going to have another day off, then we're going to go hard."
The coach will also keep a keen eye on the San Antonio-Dallas series, which he predicted would go to the Spurs in six games even before Dirk Nowitzki got hurt.
If either Western Conference coach consults Carlisle for advice, his answer is: "Get back on defense." The Nets outscored the Pistons 94-15 in fast-break points in the series.
"If there was ever a Nets-Dallas series, I can't imagine what the scores would possibly be," Carlisle said. "It might be in the 130s and '40s."
The Nets' postseason run is even more surprising considering they lost four of their last five regular-season games and never quite looked like a team ready to make an impact.
Then the playoffs started.
"If you look back at the regular season and all we went through and to play as we have in the postseason, I think you would call it remarkable," Scott said. "Since the regular season's over, and the first day of practice for the postseason, our guys have been on a mission.
"Ten straight is great, but our guys aren't satisfied right now. We want to win four more."