Kevin Garnett thinks LeBron James should mind his own business.
After James criticized Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry Wednesday for leaving Boston a year after criticizing former teammate Ray Allen for signing with the Heat as a free agent, Garnett took the opportunity to shoot back at James.
“Tell LeBron to worry about Miami,” Garnett said after the Nets beat the Heat 86-62 in front of a sellout crowd of 17,732 at Barclays Center Thursday night. “He has nothing to do with Celtic business.”
As for Pierce, when the question was posed to him, he answered with one of his own: “I left Boston?”
Pierce has a point, as Allen chose to leave Miami as a free agent, while Pierce, Garnett and Terry were traded away as Boston opted to blow things up and start over. Nevertheless, the back-and-forth between James, Garnett and Pierce was only more proof — none of it necessary — the acquisition of the two Celtics icons, along with other moves over the summer, has helped earn the Nets a level of respect from the defending champions they never had at any point last season.
It has also clearly transferred over the venom that existed between Boston and Miami to Brooklyn.
“We’re trying to install that here,” Pierce said. “They’ve taken what we’ve tried to accomplish the last couple years in Boston. We’re here in Brooklyn now, and it’s the same type of attitude.
“They’re the champs, they’ve got what we want, and we have to go through them to get it. We’ve got to just help everybody understand that it’s not going to be easy, and we’ve got to win.”
Once the game got underway following Jason Kidd’s pregame jersey retirement ceremony, it often had the feel of a regular-season contest — particularly whenever James and Pierce were on the floor at the same time. Early in the first quarter, James took it to his longtime rival in the post, hitting a difficult turnaround jumper over Pierce’s outstretched arm.
Later, James got the ball on a fastbreak and sped up the court like a freight train straight at Pierce. Undaunted, Pierce extended his forearms and absorbed the full force of James’ momentum, sending James tumbling off to the side and earning Pierce a foul in the process.
Plays like that are why the presence of Garnett and Pierce have the Heat — and the rest of the NBA — looking at the Nets differently.
“That’s going to be our identity,” Pierce said. “That’s a message for the league.”
Establishing that identity is the next step for the Nets, the necessary one if they want their expensive summer shopping spree to produce the kind of results they hope for. There is no better barometer for the Nets to measure themselves against than the Heat, the two-time defending champions who easily dispatched the Nets each of the three times the two teams met last season — all by an average of more than 20 points.
Garnett admitted, however, it’s going to take some time for the Nets to truly see where they stack up against Miami, given how quickly the Nets have put everything together.
“I don’t think that you can measure the two [teams against each other],” Garnett said. “I’m just showing a lot of respect to the champs and their body of work and what they’ve built, and what they’ve done in the last couple [years].
“They’ve been together for awhile. This team is just newly assembled. I think until we get some more games under our belt to see what we are, as a team, then we can assess or you can compare teams. But until then, I don’t think it’s fair because of what they’ve done with that team.”
Still, after the acquisitions of Pierce, Garnett and Terry — not to mention signing Andrei Kirilenko and re-signing Andray Blatche — the Heat clearly look at the Nets as a potential contender.
“Well, this will be a team that will be able to compete with the Heat, with the Bulls, with the Pacers,” Dwyane Wade said. “With all the good teams in the Eastern Conference, obviously they’ll be one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference.
“I’m not singing their praises over here, I don’t know, but they’ll be very competitive with the personnel they’ve brought in.”