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PHILADELPHIA — Brooklyn Nets power forward Kevin Garnett will not play Tuesday night against his former team, the Boston Celtics.
Garnett made sure to let reporters know that if it were up to him, he’d be out there.
“It wasn’t my decision. So that’s where I’m going to leave that,” said Garnett, who will sit out the game for rest. “I am trying to be as positive as I can be. This is not up to me, and I’m being positive. I’m trying to listen and go with the plan that was laid out for me, and being positive with that, so I’m trusting [Nets coach] Jason [Kidd] and what he has in store for myself and I’m going to embrace it.”
Kidd has already brought up the possibility of Garnett not playing in both games of back-to-back sets this season. Their talks, however, have not gone well, and the plan is still very much up in the air.
“I just feel like everyday you have a chance to better your craft, and I’d like to be a part of that. You just don’t get to 18 years and just show up and ‘ta-da.’”
ESPN Boston: KG out, Pierce in vs. Celtics
The Nets are lucky KG is who he is, because he’s actually going to embrace the plan to rest him on back-to-back nights. That’s who KG is. But if he wasn’t such a team player, Jason Kidd would be in big trouble with Garnett right now.
It probably has nothing to do with facing the Celtics tonight, either. Garnett knows that to win a title, you must have every minute you can to get guys on the same page, especially defensively. They won’t need Garnett against the Celtics. This game will probably not be a pretty one for Boston. But it’s still an opportunity in his mind to get better at what he and the team is doing.
The success and failure of our former warriors is an interesting sidebar to our own season, mostly because we’ll probably need sidebars to occupy our time during the especially messy stretches. And the success of rookie head coach Jason Kidd, and his bazillion dollar roster will be an interesting contrast to the success of Brad Stevens. We won’t measure their success with wins and losses, but we will be able to measure it, at least a little, with how each deals with team issues like this one.
Oh, and about tonight’s preseason game in Brooklyn…. the first time Paul Pierce will play in any kind of basketball game AGAINST the Celtics?
Meh. No big deal.
“I’m just looking forward to this game,” said Green of the exhibition affair in Brooklyn. “I haven’t really thought about individuals, playing against them two. I mean, they’ve got a great team. We’ve just got to come ready to play.
“I haven’t spoke to none of them since they got traded. Probably (Terry) is the last person I talked to out of them. It just got to the point where it was time to move on for me. They’re gone. I can’t worry about how they feel or how I feel. The trade happened. When I see them, brief words and then I’ll get ready to play.”
Added Bass, “I think it’s settled in. We don’t have our OG’s anymore, so the young G’s got to step up and be old G’s now and go out and play. It’s sunk in. We just need to go out and play.”
It will be weird to see Pierce out there (if you haven’t seen it already), but the big moment doesn’t happen until January 26th.
Related links: ESPN Boston: C’s emotionless for first meeting with Nets | CSNNE: Green set to face ex-teammates
The rest of the links:
Globe: Like the rest of New England, C’s in awe of Pats, Sox comebacks | Mannix’s fast break: Celtics | CSNNE: Wallace, die hard Pats fan, left Gillette early | ESPN Boston: C’s revel in Pats, Sox | WEEI: The complicated Gerald Wallace, Tom Brady, David Ortiz man love triangle
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