EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — There was a time Jason Kidd would've stayed screaming on the floor, twisting and writhing in pain, the most inopportune time for a most inopportune injury. When he landed on Ben Wallace's right foot, twisted his right ankle, and crumpled to the floor, it was every Nets flashback of angst and anguish. He rolled over to his back, slid a towel into his mouth, and screamed the pain into the softness.
Behind the Nets' bench, a teenage girl started screaming. Everything else turned scarily silent. Six minutes and 59 seconds until a sweep, until a trip back to the NBA Finals, and he was just lying there.
These aren't the old days and disaster doesn't lurk around every corner in Continental Arena. After the timeout, it was back into the game, back to the basket, back to himself. The Kidd was all right and the Nets are still chasing a championship. He left with three minutes remaining in the 102-82 victory, left to the chants of "MVP MVP," and all the bad luck, all the misfortune, stayed buried in the Nets' yesteryear.
Back to the Finals, back with a shot this time.
This was so frighteningly easy. The Nets are playing marvelous basketball, but let's face it: The Pistons and Celtics are so far from the Spurs, it's scary. Still, the Nets are playing good ball. They're capturing imaginations. They're pushing the possibilities in people's minds.
When the talk turned to the possibility of championship parades with these Devils and Nets, Richard Jefferson was naturally unaware of the uniquely humiliating Devils' tradition in the Canyon of Pylons.
"If you have a parade, where does it go?" Jefferson wondered.
When told the parking lot, Jefferson laughed.
"Only in Jersey," he said. "Only in Jersey. "
Well, exactly. Only in Jersey, too, could this disastrous piano-playing clown, Luigi, get hired who started playing the timeouts in these conference finals. The organization fired the long-time director of game-night operations recently, letting NBA Entertainment sweep into the arena out of Secaucus and give long-suffering fans Luigi singing Volare. Is his a good idea? Are you kidding? It isn't endearing. It isn't cute. It's a complete embarrassment.
If the Nets are going to the Finals, if the world is really going to be watching, Luigi's lame act needs to get lost. He sounds like something the U.S. government plays in those Al Qaida prison camps to coerce confessions.
The Nets just started selling out games. Do they want empty seats again? As Jefferson joked of his minimal NBA playoff exposure, "This is what the playoffs are about — getting your first sellout in the Eastern Conference finals."
With the Nets going back to the Finals again, most people outside Northern Jersey think it's a complete disaster that it took the Nets this long to start selling out games. Remember something: Two years ago, the Nets had an unbelievably small fan base. Opening night for Jason Kidd in October of 2002 was met with less than 7,000. That's where they started building here. No more freebie tickets under Lou Lamoriello. No more busloads of boys' club kids filling out those empty seats.
Season ticket holders are angry with YankeeNets for the rapid rate with which they've raised ticket prices. Not just year to year, but playoff series to series. The biggest fans the Nets are winning over are the kids mesmerized by Kidd, Martin and Jefferson. There is a generation of New Jersey kids practicing that Kidd to Martin lob, that one-handed Jefferson leaning flush.
The way New Jersey had to learn about the Nets, they've had to learn about it. Jefferson lives in a condo with a view over the Hudson River, in West New York, of course. They are a team largely of West Coast and California transplants, from Byron Scott and Kidd, to Jefferson and Jason Collins and Lucious Harris.
When Jefferson was quizzed Saturday morning about where he had been in New Jersey, it didn't go too well.
"Delaware Water Gap?" "No," Jefferson said. "Delaware? Is that in Delaware?" "It's where Jersey meets Pennsylvania," he was told. "So what does Delaware have to do with it?" Jefferson asked.
"The Delaware River," he was told.
"How about the Jersey Shore?" Jefferson brightened.
"I've seen the Jersey Shore," he said. "On MTV's spring break.
"The only times I'd have to go to the shore are in the summer, and that's when I go back home. I'm not going to hit the shore in mid-December."
"How about Manhattan?" "I've seen Manhattan once or twice," Jefferson confirmed.
Now, Jefferson sees the Finals again. All these Nets do. Back to the Finals, back with a shot this time.