What a difference one shot can make.

Just when it seemed like the Nets were en route to their fourth closes-shave loss in five tries, Vince Carter flung in a 35-footer at the buzzer on Monday, and all of a sudden everything seems rosy.

With that dramatic 116–115 win over the Jazz, the Nets have won 11 of their past 16 games, and three of the defeats came by just a single point. Making it more remarkable is that they’ve done it without Nenad Krstic, and more recently without Richard Jefferson.

Jefferson will miss another month, but he couldn’t have chosen a better time to be out of action. With six of the next seven games against opponents that are either reeling (Orlando) or awful (Atlanta, Boston, and Philadelphia), the Nets find themselves with a great opportunity to get a leg up in the Eastern Conference playoff race, even with Jefferson out of the lineup.

With the trading deadline looming in three weeks, New Jersey finds itself having to make a decision between its present and its future. I had argued a month ago that it was time for Rod Thorn to reach for the dynamite, with New Jersey at 11–18 and Krstic out for the year it seemed an open-and-shut case. But the Nets’ recent run of success puts them in a quandary, because now they’re in the middle ground where the decision is significantly more difficult. Thanks to the upcoming schedule, New Jersey probably will be a couple of games over .500 when the deadline rolls around, which makes the temptation to stick it out with this group incredibly powerful.

This is especially true since the Eastern Conference is up for grabs this season. If the Nets choose to add rather than subtract at the deadline, the rejuvenated club could be in position to make a deep playoff run once Jefferson gets back. Even now, the top two teams in the conference, Washington and Detroit, are only five games ahead of the Nets in the standings heading into last night’s play.

Additionally, each of those clubs has the same weakness New Jersey does — a critical lack of depth. Thus, if either was to lose a starter, the Nets hopes would be much stronger. The same goes for the Cleveland LeBrons, a one-man team in dire need of help. The only other major threat in the East, Chicago, has proved vulnerable to the Nets’ style of play, as the Bulls lack a quality post player who can punish the Nets’ unproven bigs.

That said, we shouldn’t sugarcoat things. Despite the recent run of success, New Jersey’s current group needs more help if it’s to make a serious run at the Eastern crown. That will require Thorn to go in the complete opposite direction from rebuilding, by trading some of his youth for quality veterans. The most likely suspects would be Marcus Williams and Josh Boone, but one supposes Hassan Adams and Mile Ilic would also be made available if that could provide the Nets an item off their shopping list — either a low-post scorer or a sharp-shooting wing to spell Vince Carter and Jefferson.

However, the potential reward of Eastern Conference contention has to be weighed against the relatively large risk the Nets run of mortgaging their future. Carter can opt out of his deal after the season and could potentially leave New Jersey as an unrestricted free agent. That would leave the Nets high and dry because they lack the cap space to sign a replacement and would pretty much terminate their hopes of contention for a couple of years.

New Jersey also entertained discussions about dealing Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson before the hot streak (and before Jefferson’s injury), but Carter is the first piece on the chessboard. How Thorn and the Nets read his situation is critical to how they proceed. If they think he’s leaving after the season, they’re compelled to trade him now and get something of value in return, regardless of what it does to the Nets’ playoff hopes. On the other hand, if they think Carter will either re-sign or, at worst, agree to a sign-and-trade deal that brings back equivalent talent, there’s little harm in playing the season out and seeing what happens.

Either way, the recent run of success has made what could have been a very easy decision a vastly more difficult one. Again, the Nets still have an awful lot of work to do if they’re going to be plausible Eastern Conference contenders. But the hill no longer seems quite as steep as it did a month ago at 11–18. And with each passing week that the rest of the conference fails to pull away from the Nets, the picture brightens a little more.

The result is perhaps one of the trickiest decisions in Rod Thorn’s tenure, because there is no longer an obviously correct answer. However he plays his cards, let’s hope he’s reading Carter’s intent correctly, because that’s the key to winning this hand.

***

Kobe Bryant’s preposterous one-game suspension cost fans at MSG their one chance to see the Lakers superstar this year, and I’m still scratching my head over the league’s decision. For those who didn’t see, Bryant’s arm swung in the air after his last-second shot attempt was blocked by San Antonio’s Manu Ginobili on Sunday, and his flying limb hit Ginobili squarely in the face.

I’m sure it wasn’t real fun for Ginobili, but what message is the league trying to send here? Do they really think a player would intentionally whack an opponent in the face while attempting a lastsecond shot — and then have the presence of mind to immediately try to shoot the loose ball toward the basket afterward?

Or are they saying that unintentional contact is now a punishable offense? If so, we can thank our lucky stars that ex-Knick Bill Cartwright is out of the league. His flailing limbs took out several opponents a year; had he played under the current regime he would have more suspensions in his file than Ron Artest. The league reasoned that Bryant made “an unnatural basketball act,” but that doesn’t tell us much — after all, few basketball acts were more unnatural than Mr. Bill’s swinging appendages.

Either way, it was a rotten decision, and the big losers weren’t the Lakers (who will easily make the playoffs regardless) or Kobe (who has more money than he knows what to do with) — it was the Garden’s long-suffering regulars, who were hoping to get an all-too-rare treat.

jhollinger@nysun.com