SAN ANTONIO, Texas, 8 June 2003 — Jason Kidd delivered a clutch 30-point performance to lead the New Jersey Nets to an 87-85 win over the San Antonio Spurs on Friday, leveling the NBA finals 1-1.

The best-of-seven series now shifts to the New Jersey Meadowlands for three games where the Nets have lost just once this postseason, in the opening round of the playoffs to the Milwaukee Bucks on April 26.

Looking more like the team that entered the finals riding a 10-game postseason winning streak than the one swept aside by the Spurs in Game One, the Nets had their fast-break offense working.

The defense also kept San Antonio’s Tim Duncan in check, holding the twice league MVP to 19 points.

The victory snapped a finals record five-game losing skid that had stretched back to last year when the Nets were destroyed 4-0 by the Los Angeles Lakers.

After a dismal Game One in which he missed 10 consecutive shots at one stage, Kidd hit back to show why he is considered the NBA’s premier point guard and one of the game’s clutch performers.

He drained five of six pressure-packed free throws in the final 20 seconds with the game, and perhaps the series, hanging in the balance.

With the capacity crowd howling and the Nets clinging to an 86-85 lead, Kidd stepped up to the line, blew his trademark kiss at the basket and missed his first shot, but then drained his second.

“I was confident,” Kidd told reporters. “After I made four in a row, I thought, ‘let me just try to do the same thing I’ve done previously, and I threw a little curve ball up there’.

“I said, ‘well, I’ve got to make this one so it doesn’t go into overtime’.

Riding the momentum of a Game One victory and fueled by a sellout crowd of 18,797 at the SBC Center, the Spurs made a blistering start, going up 7-0 to force the reeling Nets to take an early timeout.

But by the end of the quarter the Nets had steadied themselves to lead 19-18.

Once again, Kenyon Martin had trouble-handling Duncan, finding himself in early foul trouble and then on the bench, handing over the assignment of slowing the big man to Dikembe Mutombo.

Mutombo, the four times NBA defensive player of the year signed by the Nets this season to help land a championship, was finally given an opportunity to earn some of his $16 million salary.