OKLAHOMA CITY — The sweat poured off Kevin Garnett’s bald head just minutes after the 37-year-old future Hall of Famer put himself through a rigorous shooting workout inside AT&T Center in San Antonio Wednesday afternoon.
It was inside that same arena Tuesday night where Garnett went 0-for-5 from the field, continuing his season-long shooting woes and leaving himself and the Nets as a whole searching for answers heading into Thursday night’s game against the Thunder.
“It shouldn’t,” Garnett said when asked if his shooting struggles have impacted his confidence. “Obviously, the most frustrating thing about me is I could see if I wasn’t hitting shots and I wasn’t in here working or taking [expletive] days off.
“I put time into my craft for it to come out, but then that’s rhythm on offense. And I don’t have that right now. I’m not [expletive] about it, nor am I complaining. I’m just trying to adjust to it.”
Garnett has said repeatedly since coming to the Nets — along with Paul Pierce and Jason Terry — last June he wasn’t brought to Brooklyn to be a primary option offensively, something he repeated Wednesday. And while it’s true Garnett wasn’t expected to carry the scoring load as he did in Boston on a roster with younger stars such as Deron Williams and Brook Lopez, he certainly was expected to do far more than he has.
After missing all five shots he took Tuesday, Garnett is now shooting a dismal 36.4 percent for the season — more than a full 13 points below his 49.6 percent clip last season in Boston — and looks as if he is years removed from the player who averaged 12.7 points and 13.7 rebounds in Boston’s first-round exit against the Knicks at the end of last season.
“Honestly, I have no rhythm,” Garnett said. “I’m trying to establish some confidence, and figure out where I fit into this whole ‘where I fit into the offense’ thing.”
Garnett and Nets coach Jason Kidd were asked Wednesday if part of Garnett’s inability to get into a rhythm stemmed from him being placed on a minutes restriction this season, as he’s played less than 30 minutes in every game he’s participated in and hasn’t reached 20 in four of his last five games and seven of his last nine.
“[We’re] sticking with this,” Kidd said when asked whether the minutes limit could change, adding it’s in place to “get [Garnett] through the season.”
“He’s getting great looks,” Kidd added. “Some of them haven’t gone in, but we believe as a team they will.”
Garnett said that more than just the minutes, this season has been difficult for him because of all of the adjustments he has had to make.
“Yeah, and a lot of the offenses I’ve been in I’ve been pretty much a primary,” he said. “This has been an adjustment period. Coming here, I didn’t expect a lot of minutes, I didn’t expect a lot of touches, so I figured I would come in here and help and be a kind of liaison, or kind of attach things to where they lacked at.
“I don’t [think] the objective to bring the three of us [Garnett, Pierce and Terry] here was to play a bulk of minutes or be primaries … it’s [been] a lot of moving parts throughout the year, and it’s hard to get a rhythm with that.”
Add it all up, and Garnett and the Nets head into 2014 with a 10-21 record that leaves them near the bottom of the awful Eastern Conference and with a season’s worth of turmoil already behind them in what Garnett called the most frustrating season of his 19-year career.
“It’s because of just what we had, and you look at the roster and what we have on paper … just where we’re at,” Garnett said. “Nobody likes to lose. I’m not a loser. But I show up everyday and I try to be a professional and give everything I have.
“[Then] you put Father Time on top of that … it doesn’t help anything else, and injuries and stuff like that and guys going out.
“It’s just a frustrating time. But you know what? I’ve been through some harder times than this. I have a lot confidence that I’ll come out of this and we’ll come out of this with some decency.”
Given how both Garnett and the Nets have performed so far this season, a stretch of decency would be a marked improvement.