Jumping at Chance, Nets Even Series

CHICAGO — When the Nets shuffled off the United Center court Saturday, after a triple-overtime loss in Game 4 of their series with the Chicago Bulls, a return here seemed doubtful. A win here seemed improbable. A series win seemed like a laughable pipe dre They flew back “feeling sorry for ourselves,” point guard Deron Williams said. They were ridiculed in an interview by a Chicago newspaper columnist, who reported that the Bulls considered them “heartless.” They had one foot out the door to summertime.

But in part because of injury and illness, this first-round series has taken an abrupt turn. And after Thursday’s 95-92 win over the Bulls, the Nets will head back to Brooklyn for Game 7, set for Saturday.

“We did,” Williams said, “exactly what we wanted to do.”

The Nets forged back from a three-games-to-one series deficit to force a Game 7, the 29th time in N.B.A. history that a team has done so, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

They will try to become just the ninth of those teams to win the series.

In truth, the Nets have not beaten the Bulls in this first-round series so much as outlasted them, forcing them into a battle on two fronts, basketball and bodily harm. Without Kirk Hinrich (who missed his second game with a calf injury) and Luol Deng (who was a late scratch because of an illness), the Bulls were significantly disadvantaged.

Still, they battled with the Nets for 48 minutes, never giving an inch. The Nets grabbed a double-digit lead only once. The game could have gone either way in the fourth quarter.

“There is not a team in the league that plays harder than them,” Nets Coach P. J. Carlesimo said.

The Nets did not exactly make it easy on themselves. They missed 11 free throws and shot just 27.8 percent from the floor in the second half. They were outrebounded, 46-41, even though Chicago’s big men were in foul trouble for most of the second half.

But unlike in Game 4, when they coughed up a 14-point lead in the final three minutes, the Nets made just enough plays to hang on for a win.

The Bulls trailed, 92-90, with 32 seconds left when Nate Robinson, who starred for Chicago in Game 4, missed a layup that would have tied the game. Then, with the Bulls trailing by 3 with 6.3 seconds remaining, Marco Belinelli missed an open 3-pointer.

The Nets gave Chicago one last glimmer of hope as Joakim Noah forced a jump ball with Williams with three seconds left. But Joe Johnson managed to corral the tip and dribbled out the clock.

The Nets exhaled — it was their first win over the Bulls in five tries at United Center this season — and salvaged some pride by evening up the hard-fought series.

As low as the Nets were Sunday, after the Game 4 disappointment, they have maintained confidence in their ability to respond.

“I felt that we should,” forward Gerald Wallace said. “We feel like we’re the better team and we shouldn’t have gone down, 3-1. They won three games in a row, and we can win three games in a row.”

It helped that the Bulls’ injuries had continued piling up — before the game, Carlesimo described Chicago as a “medevac” unit — even before an illness ran through the locker room, affecting Deng, Robinson and Taj Gibson.

Robinson and Gibson played Thursday — although Robinson was seen vomiting on the sideline — but Deng could not. Just before tipoff, Deng staggered out of the locker room, water bottle in hand, making his way to the arena exit.

On Thursday, there were 15 lead changes in the first quarter, more than in the entire triple-overtime Game 4. The Nets exploited the luxury that they unequivocally hold over the Bulls at this point in the series: depth. The Nets’ bench outscored the Bulls’ reserves, 27-7, in the game.

But Belinelli, who started for Deng, scored 22 points, stretching the Nets’ defense, and Noah had 14 points and 15 rebounds. The Nets went into the fourth quarter clinging to a 75-71 lead.

A 3-pointer by C. J. Watson pushed the lead to 81-73 with just under nine minutes remaining, but again the Bulls charged back. A jumper by Robinson cut it to 85-83 with about four minutes left.

For the Nets, the scene seemed all-too-familiar: they were facing elimination because they could not contain Robinson in the final four minutes of regulation in Game 4, in which they had a double-digit lead. They sulked back to Brooklyn mentally extinguished, trailing by three games to one and seeming out of the series.

But now the Nets have flipped the pressure back onto the Bulls, who will stagger into Barclays Center on Saturday to face a team that is soaring.

“We have a lot of heart,” Carlesimo said. “We are a very resilient team. That is also true for the Bulls.”

REBOUNDS

The Nets have never won a playoff series (0-3) when trailing by three games to two, and the Bulls had won 13 consecutive Game 6s of series they were leading, dating to 1975.