They had been unable to get off ground
You know things aren't going well when the team plane can't even get you to Boston and you have to -- gasp -- fly into town on game day. That could have been yet another sign of disaster for the New Jersey Nets, for whom nothing had gone according to Hoyle in more than a week.
Six straight losses, including a certifiable stinkeroo in New Jersey Tuesday night against the lowly Charlotte Bobcats. Prior to that debacle, no Jersey team with a healthy Jason Kidd had ever lost more than five in a row. Then, the team plane couldn't deliver the team to Boston after the game -- the pilot and the engineer were nowhere to be found -- and that made an already grouchy coach Lawrence Frank even grouchier.
Frank called the Nets' predicament unacceptable. President Rod Thorn wondered aloud about a sense of urgency. The Celtics worried, rightly, that the Nets were long overdue and, well, hoped they would continue being the Stepford Nets for at least one more night.
You knew the Nets were going to be the Nets again at some point, but you would have had a hard time picking last night as the occasion after they slogged around in the first half and then fell behind by 15 points with 14 1/2 minutes to play. But Kidd turned the game around at the end of the third quarter, and Vince Carter nearly outscored the entire Celtics' team in the fourth, giving New Jersey its much-needed victory, 106-103, and dealing another blow to their wannabe division rival to the north.
They're still an un-Net-like 6-9, even if that's good enough these days to lead the Atlantic Division, which the Nets have mostly owned since 2001-02, winning it every year but one. But you couldn't leave TD Banknorth Garden last night without the feeling that the Celtics let the Nets off the hook -- and now you have to wonder if the victory will start to generate the type of play we all expected from Kidd and the lads.
Last season, for instance, Jersey dropped to 9-12 after a bad loss at home to Charlotte -- then ripped off 10 victories in a row, starting with an overtime win against Denver. They dropped five of six in late February/early March -- and then reeled off 14 straight wins. They're simply too good, too experienced, and now they have a favorable schedule where they just might string together a few W's and make their anticipated move away from the flotsam in the division.
"Hopefully, we can build on this," Kidd said after a 19-point, 8-rebound, 9-assist submission. He snapped out of a brutal shooting slump over the six previous games (27.8 percent) and connected on 9 of 16. But his two baskets and two steals in the final 70 seconds of the third helped cut a 14-point deficit to a manageable 8. ("Jason changed the whole game," Frank said.) Nonetheless, Jersey had been 0-7 in games it had trailed entering the fourth quarter. But it was time.
Before the game, Thorn had talked about how the Nets had been unable to hold smallish leads (4-8 points) in the final six minutes of the fourth quarter, something previous Nets teams did "99 percent of the time." He noted that while there were still plenty of games to play and plenty of time to right the ship, "It's time to start playing."
They were terrific in the fourth, as good as they were bad in the first 10 minutes of the third. They outscored the Celtics, 30-19. They outrebounded the Celtics, 13-8, with a 6-0 advantage in second-chance points (not bad for the third-worst offensive rebounding team in the league). They outscored them, 15-2, from the free throw line, forced six turnovers, and held the Celtics to one basket in the final three minutes.
"We had to change our tune a little bit," said Carter, who had 16 of his 23 points in the fourth. Carter was 10 for 10 from the line in the fourth, and his two biggies with 17.1 seconds left gave the Nets their 106-103 lead as Thorn was pacing in the stands, looking like an expectant father. By the time the game ended, he looked almost stunned, then smiled as a few fans offered congratulations. It was like he was thinking, "Did I just see what I saw? We won?"
They did indeed. And this one had the unmistakable air of "there's plenty more where that came from, boys." That is not good news for the Celtics, or anyone else in the conference.
Before the game, Frank said, "We're a very talented team. A team that has some lofty goals. We have to start making some positive strides. At some point we'll say, 'Enough is enough.' When we get to that point, hopefully sooner rather than later, we'll start to play Nets basketball."
You get the feeling they got to that point last night?
Peter May can be reached at P_May@globe.com. 
