One of the biggest charges against the Nets in their seven-game loss to the Bulls in the first round of the playoffs last season was their lack of a personality as a group.
It’s something new coach Jason Kidd noticed, as well, and he’s made changing that perception one of his main goals in his first season as the team’s head coach.
“It was just vanilla,” Kidd said of the Nets’ identity last season. “I think you guys can see, after the trade with [Kevin] Garnett and [Paul] Pierce that it’s kind of changed. So I think we’re doing the right thing with changing the identity.
“It was just [that] there was no flavor and no identity … with that trade, that changes the whole game.”
There’s little doubt the additions of Garnett and Pierce — two of the most respected veterans in the game who come to Brooklyn with championship rings to back that up — went a long way toward creating a new identity.
But the franchise’s image reboot began a week before the blockbuster trade was agreed upon on draft night, when Kidd — the greatest player in the team’s NBA history — was named its new head coach.
It’s a transition Kidd admitted he still was getting used to. That includes the media demands, which won’t be light for what quickly is becoming one of the most talked-about teams in the league. For Kidd’s preseason media availability Tuesday, there were more than 20 reporters and several television cameras on hand — numbers that rarely, if ever, would have been expected for such an occasion in the past.
Kidd compared the transition he’s gone through from playing to coaching this summer to the one he experienced after being traded from the Suns to the Nets in 2001 — a move that immediately produced the only two trips to the NBA Finals in franchise history.
“Well, I think there are high expectations, but this is a process, and so we have to take it step by step,” he said. “We have some new guys here, players and coaches, and so we have to get to know each other and create that bond. So there is a lot of excitement, a lot of unknowns.
“It kind of feels like I just got traded from Phoenix here. Hopefully it ends a little bit better, but we did get to the Finals that year. Right now we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we have players and coaches here willing to face that challenge.”
One of the players Kidd will be leaning on most heavily is star point guard — and personal friend — Deron Williams, who recently suffered a sprained right ankle and a bone bruise while working out in Utah. Williams appeared at his charity dodgeball tournament in Manhattan last week wearing a walking boot that he said he was being used as a precaution. He wasn’t wearing it Tuesday when he taped an episode of the YES Network’s “CenterStage.”
Kidd said Williams, who said last week he would get an MRI exam this week, will be checked out again by doctors on Friday.
“I just think we are taking it cautious with the ankle, and we’ll see Friday where he stands,” Kidd said.
Assuming Williams is healthy, as expected, when training camp begins next Tuesday at Duke in Durham, N.C., the focus next week will be on the team’s lofty expectations for this season, which include championship aspirations and a baseline expectation of winning the Atlantic Division and reaching at least the second round of the playoffs.
Kidd did his best to downplay those expectations ahead of getting his team together officially for the first time Monday at media day in Brooklyn.
“I’m just going to take it day-by-day as far as it how it goes, and try to [take it] a week [at a time],” he said. “That week will lead us to come out of training camp healthy and that last day in Durham feeling like we accomplished something.
“That’s how far as I go. That’s the expectations that I have for this team right now.”