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 [email protected] http://0rz.tw/b72uu --

※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 140.135.254.28