ORLANDO – If you want to see the most optimistic way the Jason Kidd Era in Brooklyn can turn out, look no further than Larry Bird’s stint on the bench with Indiana.
Bird, like Kidd, was a Hall of Fame player before transitioning to being a head coach without any prior coaching experience – though he did spend a few seasons away from the game in between, as opposed to a few days like Kidd did. After taking over as head coach of the Pacers in 1997, he stayed on for three seasons, leading Indiana to a pair of trips to the Eastern Conference Finals before losing to the Lakers in the 2000 NBA Finals.
The Nets would obviously love a similar run of success under Kidd, but Bird cautioned it’s not that simple.
“It’s not as easy as it looks, to tell you the truth,” Bird, now Indiana’s team president, said with a laugh here after the Pacers beat the Sixers in summer league action Monday. “I have even more respect for the coaches I had over the years.
“It’s a tough gig. It’s a lot of hours. It’s tough, it’s grinding … it was easier when you had the ball in your hands, and he’ll figure that out.”
When Bird was hired in Indiana, he went out and hired a pair of trusted assistants – current Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle to run the offense, and longtime NBA assistant Dick Harter to run the defense – and leaned on both of them heavily, while he oversaw the team as a whole. The Nets have gone a similar route, hiring Lawrence Frank, Kidd’s former coach with the Nets, to be his lead assistant, while also adding several other highly regarded assistants.
“Preparation is everything,” Bird said. “I was very fortunate in that I had Harter and Carlisle, and that worked out perfectly for me. Rick ended up being one of [the NBA’s] best coaches, and Dick Harter is one of the best defensive minds I’ve ever been around, so the transition was pretty easy.
“You have a game plan, you go in there and talk about it, and you let them guys help you. You can’t walk in there thinking you know it all, because you don’t. I just was very fortunate to have two great guys, because it made the transition very easy for me.”
Without any prior coaching experience heading into the job, Bird took advantage of having two elite assistant coaches in Carlisle and Harter to help him with preparation at each end of the floor, and instead focused on managing the personalities and temperature of his locker room.
That could be a way for the Nets to proceed with their staff, as well, given the amount of experience they have surrounded Kidd with.
“The one thing I did, I sort of just managed the team,” Bird said. I tried to put out all of the little fires in the locker room, tried to keep everybody as happy as you possibly can. You can’t really do it all the time, but you really have to manage the team.”
The teams both Bird and Kidd walked into also have plenty of similarities. The Pacers team Bird took over had a star-studded roster, including Mark Jackson, Reggie Miller and Chris Mullin. The Nets, of course, already had a trio of All-Star caliber players in Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez before adding a pair of Hall of Famers in the big trade with Boston.
Bird felt having such a veteran, experienced team aided him greatly in making the transition to coaching, and thinks it will work the same way for Kidd, as well.
“No question. I had it, too. I had a couple young guys, but they weren’t going to play much, but I had Chris Mullin, Mark Jackson, Reggie [Miller], Rik Smits, guys that had been there. The transition should be smooth.”
“A lot of them have been [deep in the playoffs], so they know what they’re trying to accomplish. They’ve put together a tough squad, and he’ll just manage them well.”
More than anything else, though, Bird said that Kidd will have to just get used to the new role he finds himself in, and learn when and where to make his presence felt.
“You’ve got to pick your spots,” Bird said. “They’ll look up to him and want some direction, and he’ll have to give it to them. But it’s a great opportunity for him.
“He’s always been a coach on the floor, but when you sit in that one seat, it’s a little bit different.”
tbontemps@nypost.com