The Nets have put up a good fight in their first-round series against the Hawks — a far better fight, frankly, than just about anyone outside of the organization thought they would against the East’s top seed.
But when they take the floor Friday night in Brooklyn for Game 6 trailing 3-2, they will need to emerge with a win if they want to force a Game 7 in Atlanta Sunday afternoon.
“It’s been a great series, and as we come home, we’ve got to come out again and hold serve at home,” Nets coach Lionel Hollins said on a conference call with reporters Thursday afternoon. “This has been a thrilling series, and if we hold serve at home and extend it to a seventh game, anything can happen.”
If history holds for the Nets, they should like their chances of pushing this series to a seventh game. Five previous times — including last season — the Nets have won Game 6 of a best-of-seven series, and last year, the Nets managed to not only beat the Raptors at home to win Game 6, but went on to win Game 7 in Toronto. They lost to the Heat in five games in the second round.
Atlanta, on the other hand, held a 3-2 lead over the Pacers in the first round last season, only to drop Games 6 and 7 to fail to become the sixth No. 8 seed to knock off a No. 1.
“An elimination game is hard,” Hollins said. “It’s the fourth game and it’s the last one you have to win and you have to have the right mind-set and go out and do the right things, and the other team is a very desperate team because it’s their last game if they don’t win.
“It’s just part of the competition of a seven-game series.”
While the Nets head into this game knowing that a loss will spell the end of their season, it’s not a much different situation from the one they were in the last three times they played at Barclays Center over the past couple weeks. In the final game of the regular season, the Nets needed to beat the Magic to give themselves a chance to make the playoffs, and after a sluggish start managed to do so.
Then the Nets came home after dropping the opening two games of this series in Atlanta, knowing that a loss in either Game 3 or 4 would inevitably leave them with too big a hole to climb out of against the 60-win Hawks. And, once again, the Nets managed to get the job done.
If they can manage to do so one more time, they’ll give themselves a chance to finally get the elusive win in Atlanta they’ve needed in this series — one that they’ve come close to getting in all three games, only to come up short each time.
“If we go out and play well, it’ll help us,” Hollins said of the Nets having had their backs against the wall multiple times recently. “If we don’t play well, it won’t help us, but all year long, you have moments where you’re grinding it and you have a good stretch. And then things happen, and you get back to it.
“We just have to go out and win the next game.”
If the Nets don’t, their summer will be under way in about 24 hours.