As a lifelong Nets fan, playing for this jersey may mean more to Kyrie Irving than most.
Chances are the same can be said for facing the rival Knicks. Irving gets his shot with Friday’s rivalry game at Barclays Center, coming in red-hot after his historic 50-point debut Wednesday.
“Just a Jersey kid playing for his home team,” said Irving, who grew up a Nets fan in West Orange. “This has been brewing since the fourth grade. I didn’t know it was going to happen at this point or this age, but it’s here and I want to take full advantage.”
Irving didn’t speak after Thursday’s practice, but Wednesday’s performance said volumes, the highest-scoring debut with a team in NBA history.
But while Irving shot 17 of 33 without a single turnover, his teammates were 31 of 68 with 16 turnovers in a 127-126 overtime loss to the Timberwolves. There was too much sightseeing going on by the other Nets and not enough playing.
“He can do almost anything with the ball, he can hit almost any shot, so it’s just amazing to watch,” Jarrett Allen said.
“He scored 50. No, for real. We were like, ‘Damn,’ ” Spencer Dinwiddie, said laughing. “But I’m so serious, we were like, ‘Whoa, this is amazing!’ ”
Yet the Nets dug an 18-point hole in a first half that saw them allow 68 points on 50 percent shooting. The improved attention to defense they showed in the second is what they will need against the Knicks.
It’s a rivalry that is rapidly picking up steam — and one in which Dinwiddie has always been front and center, stoking the fire.
“I don’t know if Kyrie has any explicit feelings towards the Knicks. He may not. I mean, he’s here,” Dinwiddie said. “The Knicks fans probably have explicit feelings. I don’t know, you’d have to ask them. It’s hard to get a read on them sometimes.
“I’m not an expert psychiatrist. So if you’re in the mind of a Knicks fan, it seems easy on the surface, but to truly understand the labyrinth that it is is a much more complicated process that I don’t have the time nor energy to devote.”
Last season both the media narrative and Las Vegas betting odds favored Irving and Kevin Durant to join then-Knick and longtime pal DeAndre Jordan in the Garden. Instead, the duo came to Brooklyn and brought Jordan with them.
Does coach Kenny Atkinson look at that as validation for the way the Nets have been built, eschewing tanking and embracing winning culture?
“No, I don’t … I think that’s quite honestly childish if you look at it that way,” Atkinson said. “We were fortunate, and things went our way. But I don’t [say,] ‘Look, oh, we’re better than you, we did it better than you.’ I just think two guys read a situation and made a decision.”
It’s hard not to notice the irony that the Nets will have an Irving jersey giveaway Friday, when they face the rival that had been expected to sign him. Atkinson professed innocence — “I have nothing to do with marketing,” he said — while Nets brass said tweaking the Knicks wasn’t the intent, only to get the jersey to fans as soon as possible.
“This is a Knicks town, we understand that,” Jordan said. “When I was playing for the Clippers we understood it was a Laker town, we got that. But it was also something we were trying to build as an organization and a group of guys.
“So we weren’t worried about, ‘Oh, we’ve got to beat the Lakers or we have to beat the Knicks for us to have a great season.’ If we’re worried about beating one team, we’re in a bad place. … We don’t want to get too involved in a rivalry, because that’s when you get your ass kicked.”
Still, Dinwiddie suggested Nets-Knicks drama is good for the NBA.
“It makes fans watch,” he said. “It’s David [versus] Goliath, good versus evil. If you have good drama, the casual fan is more enticed beyond just the game. They want the drama and the storyline. It’s part of the reason the Kardashians are famous, right? People like drama. People love that s–t and it’s made billions of dollars.”