SACRAMENTO, Calif. — After spending the past seven seasons as the face of the Atlanta Hawks, Joe Johnson has had to adjust to being a piece of the puzzle in his first season with the Nets.
But after having the weight of a franchise on his shoulders in Atlanta, Johnson is excited to have a fresh start with the Nets, who begin a West Coast trip tonight here against the Kings.
“I definitely feel rejuvenated,” Johnson told The Post after a recent practice. “I feel like this is a new beginning, a new start for me, and I just want to make the most of it.
“When you look back on your years in the NBA as you get older, you see how fast that it goes. This is my 12th year, and I can’t even believe that. But I’ve been grateful, and I just don’t want to have any regrets when I’m done.”
He said he has no regrets about his career to this point, one that saw him flourish as a member of Mike D’Antoni’s run-and-gun Phoenix Suns teams before Johnson left to become the go-to guy for the Hawks in the summer of 2005.
Knicks coach Mike Woodson watched as Johnson came to the Hawks, turning a once moribund franchise into a perennial playoff contender and a fixture near the top of the Eastern Conference.
“Joe Johnson has been an All-Star for the last six years, and he’s been a good All-Star,” said Woodson, who was the head coach in Atlanta from 2004-05 through the 2009-10 season. “I think he was a great piece to the puzzle in Atlanta. When we started that run, we built everything around Joe Johnson … so I have a great deal of respect for Joe, because Joe carried a big load there, and I thought he did it in a pretty big way.”
But, along the way, Johnson came to be defined by something totally out of his control: his six-year contract for more than $120 million signed in July 2010. Suddenly, a player who was incredibly productive for the Hawks was only thought of in terms of the dollar value on his contract.
“Look at it this way,” Woodson said. “If somebody offers you $120 million, are you supposed to say, ‘I don’t want it?’ I mean, come on.
“To me, it’s all relative. My thing is this: Is the guy a competitor? Does he play at a high level? I think he does, and I think Brooklyn has landed a solid player that’s a nice piece to their puzzle. It doesn’t get much better at the two spot than him.”
Josh Childress was a teammate of Johnson’s in Atlanta and is again this season with the Nets. When he sees Johnson now, Childress admits he sees a different person than the one who had the weight of a franchise on his shoulders in Atlanta.
“I see a more relaxed guy,” Childress said. “Not from an intensity standpoint, but more from a ‘I don’t have to do everything, or do as much as I was doing’ one. He can just play and play freely, and not have to worry about shouldering the load.”
Johnson agreed, saying he is perfectly fine fitting in as a piece alongside Deron Williams and Brook Lopez, as opposed to being the clear-cut No. 1 option teams are focused on night-in and night-out. And it still has left him in a position where he can take over at anytime, as he has in the fourth quarter of each of the last two Nets wins over the Cavaliers and Celtics.
“I just don’t have to take as much of a leading role as I did in Atlanta,” he said. “Here, it’s more playing through Deron and Brook, and I’m fine with it. I think my role has changed, obviously. Now I get a chance to play off those guys probably more than they’ll play off of me.
“We have two of the probably most important pieces in the Eastern Conference right now, and that’s a pretty good center and a damn good point guard.”
Johnson, who has been bullish on the Nets’ chances this season from the moment he was introduced at his July press conference, hasn’t lost any confidence in this group after the first few weeks of the season.
“My thoughts haven’t altered,” he said. “We still have a lot of room for improvement as a the season goes along, but I still feel like we’re a pretty damn good team.”