You could see the grimace on Randy Foye’s face as he watched Cody Zeller’s put-back go in off a Kemba Walker-missed reverse layup with 2.3 seconds left in a tight game, putting the Charlotte Hornets temporarily ahead of the Brooklyn Nets, 118-117.
Foye, 33, the Nets’ veteran 6-foot-4 backup guard, was almost as high up in the air, defending against Zeller, Charlotte’s 7-foot center, as Zeller was. Positioned under the basket, he was as close as could be without a foul being called.
“It was my fault,” said Foye, diagramming the team’s defensive scheme. “It’s my fault he got the layup. Trevor [Booker] switched and blocked the shot. I was suppose to block out Zeller.”
“You know, Zeller put that basket down with a few seconds left, but the way our team maintained focus, and our mental strength, was fantastic,” said Brooklyn’s center, Brook Lopez. “It was a great validation for our guys.” And it was, for Brooklyn and Foye.
With .9 seconds to go on the clock, Foye got the inbounds pass and shot with three. Swoosh! Nothing but net.
“That was crazy,” said Bojan Bogdanovi. “We played a great game. We would be pretty disappointed to lose it.”
Bogdanovi, the Nets’ forward, inbounded the ball to Foye. As time wound down to get the ball in play, he admittedly didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t get it in to Lopez.
Bogdanovi commented, “I didn’t know what to do. Call timeout or give it to Randy, but he was wide open, and thank God he made the shot.”
Brooklyn’s victory over Charlotte ended a five-game losing streak. Only three wins in their last 10 games before last night’s in Chicago against the Bulls, then closing out the year Friday against the Wizards in Washington, D.C.
Brooklyn begins the new year in their building, Barclays Center, playing the Utah Jazz Monday night, then traveling to Indiana to play the Pacers for a game Thursday, and then a dreaded back-to-back Friday against LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the defending champions back at Barclays.
Brooklyn will begin the new year at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. They’ll need a lot more vindication just to get out of it.
