CLEVELAND — At the end of the night, Kevin Garnett detailed what went right, a lot of what went wrong in the Nets’ season-opening 98-94 loss to the Cavaliers at Quicken Loans Arena Wednesday. And then he tried to explain how it felt at the beginning.
“Anxious. Anxiety,” Garnett said before making a face that looked like a weight lifted straining for a gold medal. “I know everybody wants to [made face] if that’s even a word. But it felt like that. Everybody wanted it right here, right now.”
Suffice to say, they didn’t get it.
“That’s not the process. The process is going to be something gradual, something we all work into and all flow into and we all have to be patient with that process,” Garnett said.
So the reconfigured Nets were taught patience the hard way. Garnett was part of that huge offseason trade with Boston that also brought Paul Pierce and Jason Terry to Brooklyn. After their trial preseason run, the Nets played for real. They learned a lot about themselves.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do and it starts on the defensive end,” said Terry who offered the biggest lesson of all.
Pierce was there in the beginning — scoring six of his 17 points in the first 98 seconds. Garnett played or 26 minutes, scoring eight points and grabbing a game-high 10 rebounds. And Terry, who finished with 14 points, sparked a big fourth-quarter comeback, ramming in consecutive 3-pointers just 26 seconds apart.
But at the end, it was all Cavaliers — sort of like the end of far too many possessions. All three former Celtics (and all three of them NBA title winners) bemoaned the Nets lack of finishing on defensive stands. Whether it led to a score or a second chance — Cleveland had 16 offensive rebounds — the Nets were good for long. But not long enough.
“I thought we defended for 22, 23 seconds, but we gave up last-second shots,” Pierce said. “We gave up offensive rebounds in key possessions and those are the things that to be a championship team, you are going to have to clean up. You’ve got to give them one shot and out.”
All three expressed their belief that it will happen. OK, it didn’t happen Wednesday but they say it will. Patience and all that.
“Hopefully, the finished product will be us hoisting up the trophy,” Terry said. “We know it’s a long haul. But like I told these guys when we came in here after this, when it happens, it’s going to be special.”