COMMENTARY : Nets’ Anderson Pleads His Case

There are excuses for skipping practice but no excuse for skipping practice without calling somebody, and Kenny Anderson should have known better. You don’t ever want to come up looking like some pocket-sized version of Derrick Coleman. Maybe Anderson has learned an important lesson here, before things get out of hand. Even if you play for the Nets, it doesn’t mean you have to act like one.

“It was a dumb mistake, an immature mistake, and I apologized for it,” Anderson said last week. “I had some personal business to take care of, but that’s no excuse for what I did. I just don’t want everybody to suddenly start thinking I’m another guy over here with an attitude, because that’s not me. I feel like I’ve been a solid citizen here, no matter what’s been going on. But when you do something like this, people right away think you strayed.”

Maybe Kenny Anderson had pressing personal business Wednesday. Maybe he was angry with Nets coach Butch Beard for sitting him down at the end of the Knicks-Nets game the previous night. Either way, Beard deserves better from him. Beard is at least trying to change all the things Kenny Anderson hates about the New Jersey Nets. Beard is at least angry that “New Jersey Nets” is one of the joke expressions in the NBA, the way “L.A. Clippers” is a joke expression.

“I want to be one of the big guys,” Anderson said, and he did not mean centers, he meant he wants to be one of the league’s real stars. “But you can’t ever be one of those guys unless you win.” He paused. “But we don’t win. We don’t ever have enough people on the same page, starting with the people up top. Every year it seems like we’ve got a new plan.”

Anderson said, “It’s gotten to the point where I’m frustrated here even when we win.”

He is frustrated and he is hurt. His shoulder hurts and he has a sore calf muscle, and Derrick Coleman has been out of the lineup, which means there are nights when it feels like Anderson is playing against the world. But Anderson is supposed to show up for work. He has to understand that he didn’t make a mistake because there was a swift and terrible reaction in the media. Even if there are too many owners for the Nets, they still pay him a lot of money to show up for work. He owes it to them and he owes it to Butch Beard and he owes it to himself.

Kenny Anderson does not want to go through the rest of his career having everyone around the league think he is as bad as everybody else in the Meadowlands.

Anderson has spent enough of his life being a charming basketball child. His skills have always made people want to spoil him. He has acted immature in the past, but always away from the court. Now he says he is changed because of marriage, says he does not run around at night the way he once did, does not stay out as late. But he has to know that acting like a grown-up is a full-time job, even if he feels as if he has run away and joined the circus by going across the Hudson to play for the Nets.

“I have to learn to deal with adversity, when I never had any adversity playing ball before,” he said. “People who know me understand. Basketball’s never been a job for me. Basketball’s never felt like work. You came to see me play basketball, you always saw the smile. Now the smile’s gone. I was always used to winning. Now I don’t know when the next win is coming. I found out how hard this game can be, when it always felt easy.

“Even when things go right around this team, you’re just waiting for the next time something’s gonna go wrong. I’ve had three coaches now and I’ve only been in the league four years. I’m not making excuses. I got a great life. But things here, they didn’t turn out like I thought they would. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop competing. But things didn’t turn out anything like I thought.”

Everything went fine until he got to New Jersey. When he should have been beginning his junior year at Georgia Tech, he was rich. Then Bill Fitch, his first coach with the Nets, made him sit. Anderson handled that, because he knew Fitch wasn’t going to be around very long. Then Chuck Daly came to the Nets, and there was a time two years ago when the Nets looked like one of the hot teams in the league. Then John Starks knocked Kenny Anderson out of the air one Sunday afternoon on national television and shattered his wrist, and the Nets’ season shattered, too.

Daly still was around last season, but Drazen Petrovic had died in a car accident during the summer. The Nets never were going to be the same team without him. Even though they handled the Knicks in the regular season, the Knicks took them out in the first round of the playoffs. Daly left right after that. Chuck Daly is working in television now and looks 10 years younger at least, like someone who is finally back on the outside after a couple of years doing basketball hard time.

“It takes a strong person to work here,” Anderson said. “I don’t care what your job is. And even Chuck left after two years.”

Anderson stays. He watches Chris Morris make an idiot of himself when he doesn’t want to tie his shoelaces. He watches fights between Willis Reed, the general manager, and Derrick Coleman. He sees Beard, a good man, look like a mugging victim after less than two months on the job.

And when things start to go wrong with the Nets, Anderson tries to do more and more and finally tries to do too much. When that happens, his own beautiful game of basketball turns into a mess.