The Nets have heard the word about them, and it isn’t good.
They have been labeled with that four-letter epithet: soft. They’ve earned that reputation, and they’re going to have to play harder and tougher to shake it.
“Yeah, the low-hanging fruit that we could honestly all agree on is sometimes in possessions we’re not playing hard enough,” Kyrie Irving said. “You saw it against Miami the other night. They were really physical, and we don’t want that to be our stigma or M.O. in the league. … The most physical teams usually win ballgames, especially down the stretch. So we’ve got to be tougher.
“Like Markieff [Morris] said, we’ve got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable at times. We’re going to mess up things, but we don’t want it to carry over to the next possession. That’s what our [message] has been in practice: on to the next play. Regardless what the ref’s doing [or] our opponent is doing, we want to focus on us.”
Morris has acknowledged the Nets have the reputation around the league of being soft, and they have done little to dispel that in preseason losses to the 76ers and Heat.
No player wants to hear that, and it clearly has stung the Nets’ collective pride. Kevin Durant said as much, and Irving concurred.
“We’re human and a lot of us have not necessarily played all the games that we would have wanted to,” Irving said. “It’s easy to say we have a chip on our shoulder, but it’s a little deeper than that.”
The Nets added length in the offseason, but they’re still lacking in girth. And beyond the size and strength concerns, they’re going to have to be mentally strong in terms of focusing and building the requisite work habits every single day.
“It’s an opportunity for us to look at ourselves and say these are these are some of the areas we’ve got to make sure that we’re forming good habits,” coach Steve Nash said.
“It’s always been a topic. We talked about it every day. We know we don’t have the most physical team, but it’s got to be a part of the way we play. … It’s not a switch, and we have to [have] mental toughness to stay physical and mental toughness to continue to build habits. That’s what it comes down to. If you want to have discipline, you got to build it every day. It is not a switch.”
Though Nash wouldn’t say whether practice Saturday was that much more grueling than usual, it certainly ran later than is typical. Irving admitted the long workout was necessary.
“I think we can agree that we need it,” he said. “We need every moment we can to gel, to synergize, to hang out and just develop our own language out there and synchronicity. That takes just long practices like this talking about it, and doing things as a team that bring us collectively closer together.”
The Nets play next on Wednesday at Milwaukee before closing out the preseason Friday at Minnesota.
Former big man Blake Griffin, who left Brooklyn for Boston via free agency, has gushed over the Celtics’ intensity and maturity, telling NBC Boston, “These guys are locked in, and nobody has to tell us to be locked in, and that’s refreshing.”
Some viewed that as shade being thrown at the Nets, either regarding Nash’s ability to motivate them or their willingness to be motivated.
Whatever the case, the tape never lies. And after rewatching their recent efforts, being tougher — mentally and physically — was a topic in the film room.
“There was a lot of talking going on in film,” Irving said. “We know we can play better. It’s just preseason but we don’t want that [excuse] to be something that makes us passive.
“Guys are going to be coming at us, we want to erase everything that was said about our team the last few years in terms of our weaknesses. We want to turn them into our strengths and it starts with developing good habits and going out in a game and not just talking about it: Doing it.”
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Nets know they need to resolve 'soft' reputation - New York Post
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