NBA

Miami serves as Nets reminder: It takes time

After Dwyane Wade convinced LeBron James and Chris Bosh to team up with him in Miami three years ago, the Heat entered their first season together with sky-high expectations — to the point that many people around the league thought they could immediately make a run at winning 70 games.

Instead, the Heat stumbled out of the gate, losing their season opener and going 9-8 through their first 17 games before eventually finding their sea legs and going 58-24 in the regular season. They stormed through the playoffs until the Mavericks knocked them off in the NBA Finals that year.

So the sky certainly isn’t falling for the Nets after losing a close game in Cleveland Wednesday in their opener, and as they prepare to open up their home schedule with a visit from the two-time defending champions Friday night, they are focused on trying to iron out all the kinks that remain in their collective games.

“I’m not really worried about Miami,” said Deron Williams, who was limited to 22 minutes in Wednesday’s loss as he continues to recover from a sprained right ankle that limited him to 10 minutes in the preseason. “We’re worried about us. … We’re worried about what we’re doing over here and we’re just trying to get better.

“We lost the first one and now we look at film today and try and get better through that and get ready to go tomorrow.”

Because of various injuries — Williams missed the first six games of the preseason, while Andrei Kirilenko, who will make his season debut against the Heat, missed the final five preseason games due to back spasms — as well as periodically resting other key players during the preseason, the key members of the new-look Nets still have spent barely any time playing together this season. In fact, Wednesday’s game was the first time the star-studded starting five of Williams, Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Brook Lopez all took the floor together at the same time.

“As far as locker-room chemistry, off the court we’re great,” Kirilenko said. “Everybody understands each other, and everybody is having a great time. In the game, we have a lot of troubles, a lot of problems that we’ll work on. That’s normal. We have a new team, and we’re going to keep building on it and keep trying to create a great product.”

The fact those growing pains are in many ways inevitable has led the Nets, including general manager Billy King, to all say it’s likely to be some time before things settle into place the way the Nets hope they will.

“It’s going to take a while before they start playing well together,” King said in a radio interview on WFAN Thursday.

Of course, two key members of the Nets, Pierce and Garnett, have their own experience of trying to quickly blend a team together. Arguably no team in recent history came together faster than the 2007-08 Celtics after Garnett and Ray Allen were acquired to play alongside Pierce. That trio struck gold in its first season, beating the Lakers in the NBA Finals to win the franchise’s 17th championship.

When asked how long he thought the growing pains for these Nets could take, Kirilenko referenced both the 2010 Heat and the Celtics in 2008 — as well as the disappointing Lakers of last season — to illustrate the wide range of possibilities a team such as the Nets has in front of it.

“They had three guys they were trying to put together,” Kirilenko said of the Heat. “But it’s a team. It’s about 12 guys, and in our case 15 guys. All those guys have to come together, and everybody should understand each other and understand the little things on the floor.

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it [doesn’t]. Sometimes it takes one season, but for Miami it took two seasons. For the Lakers last year, it didn’t click at all. Boston, when [Garnett] came in, it clicked [right away]. It’s just different teams, different examples.

“I don’t know how it’s going to go, but I hope it’s going to go the Boston way.”