It came first with Jason Kidd's long 3-pointer. Then he made a jumper from on the 3-point line. He came down the next time and pulled up his dribble 10 feet from the rim. He turned to fake a pass, then effortlessly spun back toward the basket, leaving the Pistons' Richard Hamilton in his wake, and banked in a short jumper.
And when Kidd stepped behind a pick and made one more shot, his fourth in a row, coach Lawrence Frank quietly pumped his fist on the other end of the floor.
For all the talk about what Kidd contributes to his team without scoring, the Nets are not complete until he is in control of the game. And in the second half Tuesday night, Kidd finally found his scoring touch in this series.
Spurred by Kidd's triple-double, the Nets coasted to a 94-79 victory at Continental Arena and evened the best-of-seven-game Eastern Conference semifinal series at two victories each, with Game 5 scheduled for Friday in Auburn Hills, Michigan.
On their home floor, where they did not trail for one second during Games 3 and 4 here, the Nets found all of the pieces that had been missing. Their pride and confidence might be the most telling of those pieces, traits that seemed to disappear under the weight of a pair of lopsided losses to start the series at Detroit.
"I was kind of tired and sitting on the sideline and wondering whether I would make one," Kidd said. "That's the fun part of the game. My belief systems are a lot different than anyone else's out there. My job is to get guys the ball, play defense and keep the tempo. When I make shots, it's more of a bonus."
But here, the Nets found Kidd's shooting touch, Kenyon Martin's fire and the steady and relentless end-to-end attack that has been the team's trademark for three years.
"The way those two games went, they ought to talk about momentum," Pistons coach Larry Brown said.
Though the Nets had taken Kidd's floor leadership in Game 3 and said it was enough, the team was still not complete with Kidd searching for his offense. He found it in the third quarter Tuesday night as the Nets stretched a seven-point halftime lead to a 21-point advantage entering the fourth quarter. In the quarter, Kidd hit all five of his field-goal attempts, scoring 13 of the Nets' 30 points.
"When he shoots the ball the way he did tonight, we're hard to beat," Martin said.
In the first half, Kidd shot 2 for 7, which was at least an improvement from his pace in the last game, when he shot 2 for 14, and through the first three games, when he was 9 of 40. On Tuesday night just about everything worked for the Nets. Martin was dominant on both ends of the floor with 16 points and 15 rebounds, contributing also by pumping up the capacity crowd from start to finish. Richard Jefferson, who had 30 points in Game 3, had 19 points and shut down Tayshaun Prince again. Kerry Kittles clamped onto Chauncey Billups again, limiting him to six points while scoring 14 himself. Richard Hamilton had 30 points to lead the Pistons. Rasheed Wallace had just six points and six rebounds in 26 minutes.
Kittles came out of the halftime locker room firing, hitting his first three shots, each one released with a greater degree of difficulty than the last, topping his first-half point total of five in less than two minutes of the second half. But perhaps his best decision was to get out of the way and get the ball to Kidd once his shots finally began to drop.
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