The day after the Nets were knocked out of the 2013 playoffs by the injury-ravaged Bulls in a Game 7 on their home floor, Deron Williams was asked what quality the Nets needed to add during the offseason.
“Toughness,” he said that day in early May. “I think we got out-toughed in that last series, especially [in Game 7], so I think that’s the main thing.”
It was with that idea in mind that Nets general manager Billy King acquired Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett from Boston — giving up three draft picks and the right to swap another in the process — to give them the heart transplant they needed and instill the toughness they desired in order to truly threaten the top teams in the Eastern Conference.
But the Nets team that was once again run off its home floor in a 95-78 loss to the Bulls in Wednesday’s Christmas Day matinee looked eerily similar to the group that ended last season tagged as mentally soft, fragile and lacking in toughness.
The only difference is that team won 49 games and finished fourth in the East, while this one is 9-19 and with little reason to think things will be getting better anytime soon.
“I’m very surprised,” Pierce said when asked about the Nets’ inability to respond to adversity. “We’ve got to be able to weather the storm. We’ve got to be more mentally tough. You can’t get down when things don’t go your way. You’ve got to continue to fight.”
Fight has been something the Nets have lacked throughout this season, something that once would have been considered an unthinkable charge to level against this team after it went out and hired one of the game’s all-time great competitors, Jason Kidd, to be its head coach and purposefully added veterans Pierce, Garnett and Jason Terry to make sure this team wouldn’t back down from any challenge.
Instead, the Nets have immediately folded in almost every adverse situation with which they have been presented all season, often choosing to pack it in instead of picking themselves up and going back at their opponents.
“I don’t know if it can be taught,” Pierce said. “I don’t know if you can go to the library or read a book on it or buy it at a store.”
You can’t get it from those places, but you’re supposed to be able to get it from veteran players who have led their teams to a championship. And for all of the Nets’ injuries this season, most notably the ones to Deron Williams and Brook Lopez, Garnett and Pierce have played in all but three and five games, respectively.
There has been plenty of time for them to instill the kind of toughness and fortitude they were supposed to in this team, but so far it’s nowhere to be seen.
“You can say what you want about individuals or certain people being mentally tough, but it has to be everybody,” Pierce said. “I can’t speak for everybody all the time.
“If this was an individual sport, I could speak for myself. But you know, some people respond to adversity different, no matter who is around or who says anything to them.”
There’s plenty of blame to go around for the woeful performance of this team through 28 games. The Nets are on pace to win 27 games despite having committed $189 million of owner Mikhail Prokhorov’s vast fortune through payroll and luxury tax commitments. Injuries undoubtedly have played a role, and Kidd’s inexperience on the sidelines hasn’t helped, either.
But none of the Nets’ issues have been as glaring as their inability to respond whenever it’s challenged. Even in games the Nets have won, almost any lead feels as if it may not be enough, that any opponent can reel off a quick 10- or 12-point run and get back into a game because of the expectation the Nets will drop their heads whenever things go badly.
“I’m just surprised at this season and how it’s played out altogether,” Williams said. “It’s like a nightmare, the way the injuries have been and the things we talk about every day.
“The lack of effort, the lack of energy, I didn’t see that being a problem when we put this team together.”
No one did, in large part because of the presence of two icons from Boston brought to Brooklyn to lead the way, something the Nets mortgaged their future to do.
It appears they were sold a bill of goods.