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The first looks for 2020-21 will arrive Sunday night at the Barclays Center, when the Brooklyn Nets kick off their roster of two preseason games against the Washington Wizards at 6 p.m.
Game 1 comes less than a week after NBA teams began conducting their first group workouts, and Brooklyn’s first game of the season comes just nine days later, on December 22.
“I think tomorrow will be more like seeing how it all fits together,” Jarrett Allen said. “It’s almost like the test trials where you just try to tie it all together and see how certain things that you’ve been planning in the offseason work out against a real different team and you just try to come together and see where we are.”
It has been a shorter offseason for some, longer for others, and an unusual one for all. After the league-wide shutdown in March, a slim group of Nets reconvened in July to return to action on the NBA campus in Orlando, incorporating several additions to round out the roster. Other than that, and for those who couldn’t join the team, the players looked for safe situations in which to exercise, with many gathering in Los Angeles for regular games to stay on their toes.
These full-strength Nets feature the returns of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, plus newly acquired Landry Shamet and Bruce Brown. Tyler Johnson fits somewhere in the middle, having joined the Nets for the first time this summer.
Sunday night will be the first glimpse of everything.
“We realize that wins and losses don’t matter in this particular situation, so it’s more about going out and getting a feel for the game and the speed, how we want to play as a baseball club, especially for the guys. I didn’t go to the bubble, I haven’t been on the court for eight months, “said Taurean Prince. “I think it’s a lot of excitement for everyone individually, but a lot of excitement for everyone as a baseball club. It will surely be a night to wait for tomorrow ”.
Also new, head coach Steve Nash. Nash said earlier in the week he wasn’t worried about building season-ready rotations for Sunday’s game. But he anticipates finding minutes for many, if not all, of the active and dressed players for the preseason opener, and potentially booking nights longer than 20 minutes for those expected to play significant minutes when the regular season begins.
“The priority for us will always be how we defend,” Nash said. “So if we continue to build, give effort, acceptance and connectivity on the defensive side, that’s first and foremost. I want to see how it goes, what it looks like, what combinations work well together, what rotations are possible, things like that. There is something in almost every category that we want to take out of the game, but not necessarily more than defense. You know, a big emphasis on any of them. We just want to continue building with everything we do, but defense would be the priority ”.
Nash’s first preseason is unusual with the compressed schedule. For the past two weeks, Nash has emphasized adaptability and flexibility with the circumstances of the season, and that extends to how he prepared the team for this first preseason game.
“I think you have to make some decisions,” Nash said. “You can’t get everything in shape and be in shape this preseason so fast, so you have to prioritize a few things, and we were heavy on prioritizing physical loads and demands and trying to take a longer, gradual time. approach with getting the details because I think the main thing is health and sustainability for our players, so getting them in shape and trying to err on that side as a kind of methodology for camp is important to us.
“So this will take us a long time. Hopefully, we will play basketball well, but hopefully it will be a work in progress and we will be refining throughout the year and growing, improving all the time. It is a new group. It is a very different world and we are adapting and adjusting to so many things as we go that we have to be patient. At the same time, we will set high standards and demands on the way we approach it, but it will take time for us to come together and see who we really are and begin to develop a collective personality and appearance and that is fine. It’s a fun process and I think our guys have started off on the right foot, and we are enjoying that process collectively because the guys are playing very hard with great attention and energy. “
KD AND KYRIE HAVE THE FOLLOWING
While Nash said Caris LeVert is out for Sunday’s game and day-to-day with a concussion, he said Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are in and expected to start alongside Spencer Dinwiddie, Joe Harris and DeAndre Jordan.
“There is a lot of excitement in the building,” Prince said. “We’ve been working hard, especially watching those guys come back from certain injuries, seeing them in the gym doing a lot of work, so we’ve been working hard not just for ourselves, but to be there for our teammates that we know have great debuts in. way. That is the importance of having your brother’s back and being there for those guys, besides that they are there for us during this trip and allow us to feed on them and improve.
“The vibe I’m getting from practice is that everyone is ready,” Allen said. “We had (Irving) and (Durant) sitting in a lot of these games last year and finally to have them back, we’re ready to do great things with them and we’re all excited.”
EMPTY SEATS
Sunday’s game is also the Nets’ first step into a new world: playing fanless in an NBA stadium.
Nine current Nets have the experience of playing in a fanless environment on the NBA campus in Orlando last summer, but those gyms weren’t built to hold crowds of close to 20,000.
“I think that’s going to require an adjustment,” Allen said. “We have seen what the bubble looked like. We had four walls around us on each side. We feel locked in like we are in a smaller practice gym. But going to one of those big arenas where you’re used to looking up and seeing people yelling and seeing people, just families having fun, it’s going to be an adjustment. “
“If you’ve ever played in the G League, you’ll be fine,” Prince said. “There are not many fans in those kinds of situations either. So, you are controlling what you can control. We know what the situation will be like. So that will not really be a situation where we are surprised. I think it will be more like an open gym. Just being able to be locked up and still focus on what needs to be done. “
Prince has had exactly that experience, and the most direct comparison to what the Nets are about to see, having briefly been assigned to the Long Island Nets during their inaugural season in 2016-17, when they played their home schedule at the Barclays Center. no public ticket sales and only small groups of friends, family and staff available.
But it’s also an unusual way for Nash to make his coaching debut.
“Training with or without fans will be different for me right now,” Nash said. “I am quite green. Obviously, I have a lot of history and experience with the game and the league, but actually sitting in that seat will take a bit of getting used to, whether there are fans or not. But it is a pity that it is so, we are in a global pandemic and we will not have fans. That is the right decision until we can have fans. So we have to live with it. “
