Monday, March 26, 2007
BY DAVE D'ALESSANDRO
Star-Ledger Staff
Sometime in the past week, Josh Boone went from being just a big kid who
could get the occasional stick-back and pick-and-roll layup to being an
inside force everyone began to actively look for.
But if anyone said the Nets rookie could get 10 shots and hit all of them in
the course of one game, as he did Saturday night at Charlotte, they'd sound
just a little demented.
Boone himself would never go there. He is a modest, affable, polite and
intelligent kid, and his next self-promoting remark will be his first. The
22-year-old center is still a few years and roughly 20 pounds away from being
a finished product, and he knows it.
Still, even he knows that his 21-point, six-rebound tour de force against the
Bobcats is a strong coming-out party.
"It shows me I can actually do it," Boone said after the Nets' 113-107
overtime victory. "It's a matter of putting my mind to it and getting passes
from all the guys. You know, you can't have doubt in this league. If you do
that, your confidence goes down and you're pretty much (worthless). I just
try to keep my mind focused on doing what I can."
But 10-for-10? And getting to play 13 of the last 14 minutes in a must-win
game?
"That never crossed my mind, to be honest with you," Boone said. "I just came
in with the mentality that I was going to try to help the team win in as many
minutes and I was going to get. This is just an added bonus. The big picture
here is we won the game."
The smaller picture is that the Nets now have a glimpse of what could be.
There was nothing flashy about Boone's performance, as most of the scores
were similar. Four of them were high screen/rolls with Marcus Williams, who
only had to float the pass near the front of the rim, where Boone would flush
it home -- those tend to be easy when Emeka Okafor is wearing a suit. One was
a rim-to-rim run in transition, assisted by Antoine Wright. The other four
were duck-ins, with four different guys (Jason Kidd, Eddie House, Vince
Carter and Richard Jefferson) finding him off dribble penetration inside the
Charlotte zone, and all he had to do was drop it home.
"The key is he finished," coach Lawrence Frank said. "He finished strong
around the rim."
Carter was more effusive: "Phenomenal," he called Boone's game.
What was phenomenal, however, was that his 10 field goals resulted from the
work of six different teammates. At least the Nets recognized which guy knows
how to play against the zone.
"Especially playing against Syracuse -- that's all they ran, a 2-3 zone,"
said Boone, who starred at the University of Connecticut. "I'm familiar with
it. But it was really our (zone) offense, that's really what it was. It's
easy when you have guys who are so talented to get you open and who can make
passes. They spend so much time focusing on Jay and Vince and all of our
ball-handlers, we were just going down the lane and the baseline help really
wasn't coming."
The genesis of Boone's new job description was a meeting in Oklahoma City on
March 13, when Frank informed Cliff Robinson that for the first time in his
18-year career, he is no longer a regular.
The coach phrased it more delicately than that, of course, but it came down
to this: At 40, with diminished offensive skills, Robinson is best suited for
heavy lifting, such as those nights a team needs someone off the bench to
lean on Dwight Howard or Shaquille O'Neal for 10 to 15 minutes. But when the
matchup was right -- and when there was the potential to use athleticism as a
weapon and get Boone some space to use his long arms and his ability to play
above the rim -- the coach had to find a way to get him in the game.
"And Josh paid off," Frank said. "As we get down the stretch -- and it's
going to be an understanding for all our guys -- whoever has it going that
night is going to play. You just need everyone to sacrifice for the good of
the team to support each other."
Dave D'Alessandro may be reach at ddalessandro@starledger.com
http://0rz.tw/b72uu
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