Regular season games in the NBA often get blasted as meaningless. And yes, often teams play like they don't care if they win. Tuesday's game at the Meadowlands does not count as one of those games. For different reasons, both the Nets and the Pistons had something to play for, but the Nets took comfort in their 91-84 win. Detroit, which came into Tuesday with an eleven-game winning streak, has been playing hard all season en route to the NBA's best record. But they could not contain Jason Kidd and the Nets.
Kidd and his teammates came off a dreadful West Coast trip, but the return home helped them. So has a healthy Vince Carter, whose 17 points Tuesday did not come close to his peak before his back injury, but still constituted an improvment over his production while injured. New Jersey has been inconsistent this year, and so has Carter. For both to end up better than disappointing, they'll need to string together peformances like Tuesday's, not find them once every five games.
Photo by Bill Kostroun (AP) via Yahoo
