EAST RUTHERFORD,
N.J. ? This is why the New Jersey Nets won’t just give Jason Kidd
away.
Kidd scored seven of his nine points in
the final 1:42 and added 11 assists as the Nets snapped a nine-game
losing streak with an 87-80 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks
Tuesday night.
Ignoring the distractions Kidd created
a day earlier with his comments encouraging a trade, the Nets held the Bucks to 37.5 percent shooting and
avoided their first double-digit skid since dropping their final 11
games of the 1999-00 season.
Richard Jefferson scored 20 points, and
Vince Carter had 16 points and matched a season-high 12 rebounds for
the Nets. Bostjan Nachbar had 14 points.
Royal Ivey scored 19 points for the Bucks, who were without leading scorer
Michael Redd for the second-straight game because of a left knee
strain that will also keep him out of Wednesday’s game at
Philadelphia.
Mo Williams and Bobby Simmons each
added 14 points.
Kidd has been frustrated with the Nets’
disappointing play and finally acknowledged Monday in a story on
ESPN.com that it might be best to trade him, saying, “It used to
be if I got a triple-double, that was an automatic win. That’s just
not the case now. We tried to make this work. We’ve found out it
doesn’t. It’s time for us all to move on.”
The Nets aren’t ready to do that just
yet ? especially if it means making a bad deal. Even with their
skid, which included six losses on a Western Conference road trip,
they began the night just a half-game behind Indiana for the eighth
and final playoff spot in the East. Winning Tuesday was New Jersey’s
only concern, coach Lawrence Frank said before the game.
“I think if you allow a
distraction to stay in you, and you allow that to control your own
emotions, your own attitude, that’s your fault as an individual,”
Frank said. “We just have to focus everything we can to win
tonight. Once you start putting all this stuff together, you clump
it, ‘We’ve lost a bunch of games in a row; best player wants to be
traded,’ it’s just focus on what we need to do to win a game. That’s
what our focus is.”
The Nets led most of the way and had a
12-point lead with 5:48 remaining before their offense stalled. Yi
Jianlian’s two free throws capped an 8-0 spurt that cut the Nets’
lead to 78-77 with 2:06 to play, but Kidd answered with his only
field goal, a 3-pointer with the shot clock winding down, then set up
Jefferson’s jumper for an 83-77 advantage with 1:19 left.
Kidd’s tough defense on Williams forced
the Bucks into a turnover, and he hit
two free throws for an eight-point lead. Ivey made a 3-pointer, but
Kidd followed with two more free throws to put away the game.
Kidd and Jefferson combined for the
Nets’ best stretch of the game. New Jersey led by five in the third
quarter before Jefferson scored six straight points, the final four
after assists from Kidd, to make it 51-40 midway through the period.
Kidd set up three more buckets by
Jefferson later in the period, including a pretty bounce pass for a
fast-break layup, to help the Nets keep the lead at double digits
into the final minutes of the quarter. Jefferson scored 14 points in
the period, which ended with the Nets leading 61-54.
Carter, who shot only 6-of-22, scored
11 points in the first quarter, when both teams shot poorly.
Williams’ 3-pointer with 25 seconds left in the period gave Milwaukee
a 22-20 lead. The Nets held the Bucks to
just 13 points on 5-of-21 shooting in the second quarter and led
40-35 at halftime.
