MIAMI — At some point this season, on the shores of Biscayne Bay, the Nets will have to prove they are a worthy challenger to the defending champion Heat.
It just won’t be Friday night.
The Nets and Heat will meet at AmericanAirlines Arena for the second time in eight days, the final preseason game for both teams before they open the season Wednesday — and exactly a week before the Heat travel to Brooklyn for the Nets’ home opener.
“You’ve got to play the games, so we’ll play the game, get everybody their minutes and hopefully come out of it healthy and get ready for [the season opener in] Cleveland,” Nets coach Jason Kidd said after Thursday’s practice. “We’re not thinking about the Heat right now.”
So much of what the Nets did this summer, from hiring Kidd to trading for Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry to signing Andrei Kirilenko and re-signing Andray Blatche was to allow themselves the opportunity to go toe-to-toe with the Heat, who, as the two-time defending champions, are the standard for whether or not a team is championship material.
But in the eyes of Deron Williams, the Heat are not the only thing Nets general manager Billy King had in mind when he was renovating the team’s roster.
“I think we’re built to try and compete against everybody,” Williams said. “We have size. We have different lineups we can do, [whether it’s] small or big.
“I think we’re built for anything being thrown at us.”
Some of the luster has already been taken off Friday night’s game with the news LeBron James isn’t expected to play, and with Dwyane Wade a possibility to join him on the sidelines.
For the Nets, though, Kidd said he’ll use the game as an opportunity to make sure everyone is ready to go for the regular season after giving his entire starting five the night off in Boston on Wednesday.
“Yeah, we’ll get those guys some minutes [Friday],” Kidd said. “This is the last dress rehearsal, so get those guys some minutes and get them out so they’ll be ready to go against Cleveland.”
Could Williams be one of those players to get some minutes? It appears a possibility after the star point guard — who has missed the entire preseason as he recovers from a sprained right ankle suffered last month — completed his first full practice Thursday without any complications.
“It felt really good,” a smiling Williams said . “No pain, no issues, no issues during practice … another good step.”
After seemingly treading water in terms of his progress during the first two-and-a-half weeks of training camp, Williams has steadily made progress over the past week, including going through his first contact portion of practice Tuesday and fully participating in the shootaround on Thursday.
Williams even put down a couple of dunks after practice ended, after joking the day before he couldn’t get more than three inches off the ground.
“It was my first day really trying [to dunk],” Williams said. “I think a lot of my stuff has been in my head, just getting over that mental factor.
“Once I did the 5-on-5 [Wednesday], that was a big step for me mentally. When I was just doing 5-on-0, I was aware of everything, and trying not to do this or that. But once I got out there, my instincts took over when I realized that I’m fine.”