DURHAM, N.C. – He had already dispensed with the happy-talk platitudes of Day Two, had already rattled off the plenty-of-time and the day-to-day and the we’ll-take-it-as-it-comes, the basic inventory of training camp.
So Billy King decided to tell us what’s really on his mind.
“Now,” the general manager of the Nets said Wednesday. “This is the window. This season. Then we’ll see what next season brings.”
And there it is, out in the open, out in the sun, precisely as it should be. This is the mandate laid before this brand-new gathering of Brooklyn Nets: pass the Knicks, pass the Pacers, pass the Bulls. Catch the Heat.
And be ready to pass them, too, come May.
He had seen his creation on the floor of the Coach K Practice Court twice on Tuesday, was about to have another gander at it in a few minutes, but right now, standing on the Cameron Indoor Stadium hardwood where he’d been an excellent college basketball player a quarter-century before, he was placing a pinhole in the pretense of a two-year plan.
And slicing that in half.
“It’s real now,” King said. “This isn’t a myth. This is reality.”
On the one hand, this is as refreshing a wind that’s blown through New York City in years. The Mets and the Jets are constantly stacking five-year plans on top of each other. The Knicks have been reloading for 40 years. Somehow, the Rangers have a brand-new Stanley Cup drought that reaches its 20th birthday this spring. Even the Yankees are talking about working within the constraints of a budget, and sound like a team talking about two and three years from now.
So into the vortex, into this void, steps the hastily assembled Nets, talking not of next year but of next spring, their GM speaking not in terms of patience but performance, not in a while but right bleepin’ now.
The flip side, of course: The Heat are still the Heat. The Bulls have Derrick Rose back. The Pacers believe they’re the Heat’s heirs apparent. Many of the players have, to put it gracefully, a lot of dents on their engines. The holdovers watched the diminished Bulls walk into Barclays Center and push them around in a Game 7 that left a just as sour a taste behind as all the Game 7 failures the old Dodgers used to pile high toward the Brooklyn sky.
King knows all of this. And doesn’t seem to mind a bit.
“This really happened,” he said. “It’s one thing to see the names on paper, another to see them go up and down the court. It’s real. They’re playing for the Brooklyn Nets.”
Good for King, who’s had his share of no-shot Octobers for both the Nets and the Sixers, who’s had his fill of seasons in which hope and tomorrow were the only things besides bobble-head days and dollar-beer nights that could sell tickets. Not now. Not this time. There are plenty who lauded him for his aggressiveness this summer while simultaneously handing him a wrong-place, wrong-time, wrong-era consolation prize. He isn’t likely to accept any medals for trying.
“The pieces fit,” King said.
He was actually talking about the Celtics of recent vintage, the jigsaw puzzle Danny Ainge put together on the fly, in an identical time frame, force-blending three superstars into one remarkable force that won 66 games in their first regular season together, then 16 more in the playoffs. As it turns out, it was a good thing that Ainge opened the window wide immediately, because they never did duplicate.
So it is now or bust for this incarnation of Nets, a time to eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow might come a press conference announcing a ride off into the sunset. Has their GM’s reach exceeded his grasp?
Maybe. But that’s a good thing. You try to measure these things, sometimes you wind up watching since Watergate (like the Knicks) or Woodstock (like the Jets) and find yourself adding another five years to your waiting list.
“This isn’t brain surgery,” King said. “It’s just basketball. We’ve got a lot of guys with a lot of basketball IQ. They’ll figure it out.”
And if it requires a little bit of urgency? Good. It’s about time today is more important than tomorrow. Take a chance. Take a shot. What the hell.