Ugly Loss Aside, Spurs Will Prevail

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. â€”  Add another historic moment for an NBA Finals that already is scraping the bottom of the points and ratings records.

Never before has a team saved a series and lost it at the same time.

The New Jersey Nets had every possible ally on their side Wednesday night: the officials, the home crowd (featuring a pretty good celebrity turnout that included Bruce Willis, LL Cool J and a video appearance by Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini), plus a visit by the Holy Grail of hockey. They were the beneficiaries of 29% shooting by the San Antonio Spurs.

And yet, even with all that, they still only won, 77-76.

That enabled them to tie the best-of-seven series at 2-2 and retain hope for winning it. Had they lost Game 4 they would have fallen into a 3-1 hole that no Finals team has escaped.

But on the other hand ...

That’s it?

Richard Jefferson finally shows up for the Finals (18 points and 10 rebounds), the Spurs’ starting guards shoot two for 21 on a night when even three for 21 would suffice, and the Nets have to scratch and dig and hope their way to a victory?

This is all starting to feel very Spurs-in-six-ish to me.

It’s hard to imagine the combination of Tony Parker shooting one for 12, Stephen Jackson shooting one for nine, Malik Rose shooting 0 for 9 and Manu Ginobili shooting three for 10 occurring again.

And once the Spurs get back to the SBC Center, they won’t be inundated with Jersey references that are enough to wear anybody down.

It starts with Joe Piscopo warming up the crowd before the game. It continues with Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run� just before tip-off. And “Sopranos� characters are likely to pop up on the big screen at any time.

The coolest moments at Continental Airlines Arena came at the end of the third quarter, when the New Jersey Devils brought the Stanley Cup onto the court, and during a timeout midway through the fourth quarter, when Bruce Willis grabbed the microphone and exhorted the fans, finishing up by saying: “We’re going to win this game right now and that’s that. Yippie-ki-yay!�

So much for the entertaining part of the evening.

The lone basketball highlight was Jefferson’s monster dunk over Kevin Willis in the third quarter.

All you need to know about this series is the two most dramatic plays in Games 3 and 4 were rebounds. Duncan’s rebound of a missed free throw when the Spurs were clinging to a three-point lead saved Game 3 for the Spurs.

In Game 4, the Nets ran the same play twice in a row with a one-point lead in the final minute: an isolation for Jason Kidd on the right side. He missed his short jumper each time. Dikembe Mutombo grabbed the first miss and called timeout with 33 seconds remaining.

Kerry Kittles beat the Spurs to the long rebound on the second and got the ball to Kidd, who was fouled.

Of course, rebounds are always going to be important in a game with 114 missed shots.

And it’s always a bad sign whenever references to the Syracuse Nationals and Fort Wayne Pistons appear in the post-game notes. San Antonio’s 28.9% shooting was the third lowest in NBA Finals history, ahead of only Syracuse (27.5%) and Fort Wayne (28.0%) in the same game in 1955.

The Nets have scored 332 points in the series. For comparison’s sake, the fewest points scored by a team for a Finals that ended in four games was 376 points by the Baltimore Bullets in 1971.

This was as slow and low-scoring as a baseball game. Maybe that’s why there was so much analysis of the “managers� afterward.

Spur Coach Gregg Popovich made the right moves replacing the ineffective Parker and Rose with Willis and Speedy Claxton. Willis had six points and three rebounds in a key two-minute stretch to help the Spurs wipe out a 15-point Nets’ lead in the third quarter. And Claxton scored 10 points in 17 minutes.

But Popovich took heat for leaving sharp-shooter Steve Kerr on the bench until the final play with the Spurs clanging so many jumpers. Why did Kerr sit?

“Because I decided to do something else,� Popovich said.

Net Coach Byron Scott essentially let his starting pitcher go the distance, playing Kidd 47 minutes.

He made the defensive switch of putting Kittles on Parker, who gave Kidd the Kingsford treatment in two of the first three games. And he was rewarded for his decision to leave offensively-challenged Mutombo in the game instead of Aaron Williams in the final minute.

But his best move was the tactic started by his mentor, Pat Riley, and perfected by Phil Jackson: when all else fails, blame the referees.

On Tuesday, Scott noted the Spurs’ 88-58 advantage in free throws through the first three games, and as a result the officials sent the Nets to the line 29 times Wednesday (compared to 24 for the Spurs).

The Nets want praise for their defense, and they have played well at that end of the floor.

“Even when we win, people are not giving us much credit,� Jefferson said. “It’s more about what the Spurs are not doing.�

In the end -- especially at the end -- this was about the Spurs missing shots, including Ginobili’s wide-open three-pointer that could have tied the score in the final four seconds. (Duncan grabbed the rebound and threw in a meaningless jumper at the buzzer).

They won’t miss that many shots again, which is why they won’t lose this series.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at [email protected]