Make no mistake, Jason Kidd is quite honored to be selected to the All-NBA first team.

"But right now," he said, "I've got something bigger on my plate."

	Jason Kidd's Nets tangle one more time with Brad Miller's Pacers.

Only the season.

That's how big tonight is for Kidd and the Nets in the Meadowlands. A win in Game 5 over the Pacers means they breathe a huge sigh of relief and advance to the second round against Charlotte.

A loss means they can flush their 52 regular-season wins and their Atlantic Division championship right down the drain. All the good work Kidd and his new teammates did this season -- doubling last year's win total, bringing excitement to the Meadowlands for the first time in eons, giving the long-suffering Nets real hope and securing the No. 1 seed in the postseason for the first time in their history -- they could kiss it all goodbye.

It's win or else in the Meadowlands, where the Nets dominated their opponents and won 33 of 41 games until Indiana came calling for Game 1 of this best-of-five series.

"We know what the stakes are," said Jersey's Keith Van Horn. "To finish with the best record for the season and then not get the job done in Game 5, that would be disappointing."

If not disastrous.

"When you have an opportunity to finish off a team, you have to do it," said Kidd, referring to Game 4, when the Nets could have closed out the eighth-seeded Pacers but failed to show up. "We have to grow as a team. We will grow together, through good times and bad times."

How long those good times last, nobody knows.

Unfortunately for the Nets, they could be on the fleeting side. Kidd, the primary reason the Nets had one of the great turnarounds of all-time, can opt out of his contract after next season. So beyond those 82 games and whatever the Nets do in the 2003 playoffs, they have no guarantee that he'll re-sign with them. Who's to say a loss tonight doesn't adversely affect their chances of having him stay for the long run? Tonight will say a lot about what the Nets have -- or don't have -- in terms of big-game players.

For so many key Nets -- Kenyon Martin (who has outplayed Most Improved Player Jermaine O'Neal), Van Horn and Kerry Kittles (the latter two have struggled in their second playoff appearances, except for heroics in Game 3) -- they've never played in a bigger game in their professional lives. And Kidd himself is under the microscope, what with his failure to get out of the first round in four of five playoff seasons as a member of the Phoenix Suns.

"This game is what a lot of guys live for," Nets coach Byron Scott said. "We will find what guys are made of, what guys do when they're put to the test in a deciding game."

The scary thing for the Nets is that they're going up against one of the very players who has thrived in this kind of high-pressure setting. For Reggie Miller, tonight will mark his 109th playoff game and third deciding Game 5. He also has the experience of playing in four Game 7s. No wonder when the Pacers forced a deciding game, he told his teammates, "Now the fun starts."

While he has averaged 21.8 points per game in this series, he has not had a vintage Reggie Miller fourth quarter, something that worries the Nets for obvious reasons. Miller, in fact, came up with one of his more celebrated misses, firing up a wide-open airball with a chance to win Game 3 at the buzzer. Tonight, if it's close down the stretch, Miller is the one Pacer who has the ability to shoot the Nets into an early, long and bitter summer.

"It's going to be a big challenge playing Reggie because he's been there before," said Kittles, the Nets' primary defender on Miller throughout the series. "He's played in many Game 5s and Game 7s through the years. He loves to play in these kinds of games."

Miller even loves doing it on the road, where he has often left his mark. The last time he did it, his brilliant fourth-quarter shooting in Madison Square Garden in Game 6 of the 2000 Eastern Conference finals propelled the Pacers past the Knicks and into their first-ever NBA Finals.

	“	No matter if the season ends after Game 5 or in June, we've had a great year. Of course, we don't want it to end now. ”
		— Jason Kidd

The Pacers, of course, are a very different team now. Miller was always a tough cover. But when the Pacers had Jalen Rose, Rik Smits and Travis Best on the floor at the same time, he was even more effective because he had more space to work.

Part of the reason that Miller has been held in check in this series is that sometimes the young Pacers, like Ron Artest and Jamaal Tinsley, fail to get the ball in his hands. But the Nets also haven't had to worry about defending other proven scorers. O'Neal looked like he'd be a handful with 24 of his 30 points in the first half of Game 1. But in the last 14 quarters, he has scored only 44 points, missing 29 of 44 shots.

"I'm surprised they haven't gotten the ball to Reggie more, but we've also been keying on him, trying to make other guys beat us," the Nets' Lucious Harris said. "Without Rose and Best, they're not as tough to defend. Those guys were proven players, they had played in big games and had been to a Finals. Now, it's a little easier because they've got younger guys who are learning. Plus, we're doing a pretty good defensive job."

Except for a team-wide lapse in Game 4, when the Nets played with no urgency and showed their lack of maturity. "I guess those are what people say are growing pains," Van Horn said.

But for anyone who had watched them closely during the regular season, a rock-solid D was exactly what was expected to carry over into the postseason. During their best season ever, they made a lot of highlight reels, with Kidd's passes, Martin's dunks and their lethal fastbreak garnering the spotlight. But their foundation was on D. They improved to the fifth-best team in points allowed, from 22nd a year ago, and were sixth-best in field-goal percentage, moving up 18 spots in that stat.

"Defense is what carried us all season," Kidd said. "That's what we relied on and what we will rely on. No matter if the season ends after Game 5 or in June, we've had a great year. Of course, we don't want it to end now."

Heaven, forbid.

Mitch Lawrence, who covers the NBA for the New York Daily News, writes a regular NBA column for ESPN.com.