MILWAUKEE -- To the New Jersey Nets, there's no place like the road.
With Sunday's 106-100 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series, the Nets have won all four of their playoff games away from home. They will try to use their 'road-court' advantage tonight to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.
'It doesn't seem to matter to them if they're at home or not,' the Bucks Junior Bridgeman said. 'It's like they're playing on the moon.'
The Nets got to the conference semifinals by defeating the NBA champion Philadelphia 76ers in an opening-round series -- winning three times on the road while losing twice in New Jersey.
'We concentrate better on the road,' Nets center Darryl Dawkins said. 'After beating Philly we've got a whole lot of confidence because this is a young team. When you lose all the time you expect to lose. But when you start winning you say, 'I want to win.' And that's what we're doing.'
They did it Sunday with a brilliant second half, careful ballhandling and a huge advantage in offensive rebounding. New Jersey turned the ball over just seven times and Buck Williams' 17 rebounds helped the Nets enjoy a 19-7 edge on the offensive boards.
But the Bucks held a 50-44 lead after the first half and Nets coach Stan Albeck made his displeasure obvious in the locker room at intermission. The Nets responded by outrebounding the Bucks 18-6 in the third quarter to take a 77-73 lead at the end of the period.
New Jersey continued its onslaught in the final quarter and led by as much as 88-77 with 7:29 left. The Bucks closed to within 4 points near the end of the game, but Dawkins put it out of reach with 5 late points.
Dawkins finished with a career playoff-high 32 points. Bob Lanier and Alton Lister fouled out trying to guard him and Dawkins took advantage by sinking 16-of-18 free throws.
'The Nets are playing as well as any team in basketball right now,' Milwaukee coach Don Nelson said. 'We were totally dominated in the second half on the boards.'
Milwaukee was also hurt by the unexpected. Sidney Moncrief, the Bucks' leading scorer in the regular season with an average of 20.9 points per game, hit just 1-of-8 shots from the floor and scored 10 points. New Jersey, the league's weakest shooting team from the line, hit 34-of-48 attempts.
'Their defense is much stronger than when we played them in the regular seaso,' Moncrief said. 'Our first priority was to get back on defense and prevent their break. As a result, we weren't able to control the boards the way we would have liked.'
Milwaukee will have to find more success tonight or the Bucks will be staring from the bottom of a very deep hole.
'If I continue to playing like this, we can go a long, long way,' Dawkins said. 'People didn't even expect us to beat Philly. But we did beat Philly and they closed down the whole town, declaring it a national day of mourning.
'We're just going to keep it going.'
