MIAMI — So this is what the varsity looks like: a little bit faster, a little bit quicker, a little bit smarter, a little bit savvier. And a whole lot better. Intellectually, you knew that.
Instinctively, the Nets knew that. But it's still not the same as seeing it up close, in person, in living color.
"We have to put up more resistance," Paul Pierce said.
"We have to elevate," Shaun Livingston said, "because they're going to force you to elevate, or else."
"They're the defending champions," Jason Kidd said. "They're going to be at a high level. You have to find a way to match it."
None of this came as a surprise to the Nets, of course, certainly not to the grizzled and the graybeards among them who have been through this all before with the Heat. Still, it's one thing to say things properly — We swept the season series and it means nothing! They've been off for a week but we don't expect them to be rusty! — and quite something else to stand your ground in the face of a full frontal Heat attack.
And not wind up flatter than Kevin Bacon in "Animal House."
"They're the ones that kept attacking for 48 minutes," Kidd said. "We didn't."
The Nets didn't lose the series Tuesday night, and there's little chance any of the key participants will be confused on the matter. The Nets came to these Eastern Conference semifinals in full grind mode anyway, snarling their way through the seven-game slog with Toronto, and the grinder's mantra is this: Get a split. Game 1, Game 2, doesn't matter, counts the same.
Go home 1-1.
"We're not overreacting to this," Pierce said, speaking both of the size of this loss — 107-86 — as well as its impact. "We feel we can get a game in this building. That hasn't changed."
That is the one benefit to playing the Heat: They don't often lull you into anything resembling a false sense of comfort, security or serenity. They are cold-blooded and they are cool-handed, they are all business, and there is no escaping the talent in the room.
The Nets grew to respect the Raptors, but as well as Toronto played, as close as they shoved the Nets to the abyss after five games and very nearly into a vast chasm of darkness at the end of Game 7, the Raptors never intimidated the Nets. First-timers don't frighten old-timers, no matter how good Kyle Lowry was.
It was a vigorous preliminary for the Nets, an opening act, Rickles telling a few side-splitters before handing the stage over to Sinatra's main event. It was a useful bonding tool, a coming together, a fine benchmark in the franchise's Brooklyn history.
But this is the varsity.
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