Here were the Nets getting the best of MVP candidate Stephen Curry and his juggernaut Golden State Warriors in a game when Brooklyn’s Jarrett Jack made the biggest shot of the night and Curry couldn’t even get off his last shot of the night.
Great win for Lionel Hollins and the home team ... except for most of the night this sounded more like Oakland, where the Warriors call home.
It’s now the third season of pro basketball in Brooklyn and the Nets are still dreaming of one day becoming the home team in their own buildiing.
Between the “Let’s Go Warriors!’’ chants and the “M-V-P’’ chants for Curry, the Nets found themselves playing the role of visitors in Barclays Center on Monday night.
“We can send all those Golden State fans home that came to watch here in Brooklyn,’’ Hollins said after his team showed off its new chemistry and sent Steve Kerr’s team to only its 12th defeat of the season.
No, Hollins wasn’t very happy with having to send his team out for a home game that really was more like the continuation of the schedule that had the Nets out on the road since Feb. 7. Yeah, that long ago. But this is a new deal for Hollins, whose last coaching stop was Memphis, where the Grizzlies enjoy one of the loudest, most intimidating crowds in the NBA.
Now he’s finding himself with a homecourt “disadvantage’’ whenever the Knicks cross the Brooklyn Bridge, or when a rock-star superstar like Curry hits the herringbone court with one of the top teams in the league. They came out to cheer Curry, who won the three-point shooting contest in Barclays during All-Star weekend, but somehow found himself with the ball still in his hands when the buzzer sounded.
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“I thought I had more time,’’ he said. “It was their night.’’
The Nets can have more of those as they try to nail down a playoff berth. If only they had the benefit of having the kind of crowd the Warriors enjoy out in the Bay Area.
“We have to excite our crowd and get them to be Brooklyn Nets fans and not the other team’s fans,” Hollins said. “This is definitely a start. When you win games like this, people take notice and keep coming back and eventually start rooting for you and not the other team.”
When the Nets first said they were coming over from New Jersey, it didn’t seem like the greatest idea in the world to be moving deeper into Knick country. That’s what Brooklyn is, plain and simple. But Barclays is a first-class arena, one of the best venues in the NBA. Unfortunately, this isn't Hollywood and a situation where “if you build it, Nets fans will come.’’
When will that ever change? Shaun Livingston, who played last season for Jason Kidd in Brooklyn and was as smart as Steve Kerr, finding his way to the Warriors, told me after the last game of the Warriors’ 3-3 road trip, “it’s going to take a while around here.’’
“They’ve got to build it and they’re going to have to be good, consistently,’’ Livingston continued, as he was heading out of the visitor’s locker room. “But even then, it’s a tough market. They’ve got the building and the atmosphere and they love hoops here, but it’s still the Knicks and New York. They’re new to Brooklyn, still. It’s not like they’ve been here 30 years or it’s a 50-year thing.’’
To make matters worse, the fans gave Curry the kind of treatment LeBron James gets over in the Garden. Lots of hero worship, which hasn’t been unusual for the Warriors when they’ve hit the road this season.
Afterward, as he thought about all of the pro-Warrior chants and the crowd calling out M-V-P when he was bringing his team back in the fourth quarter, Curry admitted, “I kind of forgot where I was for a second, to be honest with you. We had a big contingency of fans. I looked around and said, “Where am I?’ It was loud in there. You love that kind of support on the road. We’re 46-12 and we’re hopefully destined for great things. So to have that kind of support is huge.’’
It can be just as deflating for the home team, but the Nets held on when the ex-Warrior, Jack, pulled them through with a jumper in the final second. That kept them in eighth place in the East, if only barely, at 25-33. But they can use this five-game homestand to pass Miami and move into seventh place, as the Heat tries to find a way to overcome what could be a crippling loss, with Chris Bosh out for the remainder of the season due to blood clots in his lung.
All the games for the Nets over the next week are winnable, mainly because Hollins’ team has finally found its groove.
Now it just needs to find a home.
Longtime New York columnist Mitch Lawrence continues to write about pro basketball, as he’s done for the last 22 years. His columns for NBCNewYork.com on the Knicks, Brooklyn Nets and the NBA, along with other major sports, will appear twice weekly. Follow him on Twitter @Mitch _ Lawrence.
