Laker Arrogance Could Mean Bliss for the Nets

Jason Kidd expects that the New Jersey Nets will be huge underdogs when the NBA Finals begin. Kidd said it didn’t matter who the Nets played, the Lakers or Kings. It didn’t matter because whoever it was, they would automatically be crowned NBA champions by most basketball fans west of the Delaware River.

“That would be a mistake,” Kidd said. “But it’s what’s been happening to us all year so what’s the difference? We weren’t supposed to be the best team in the East. We weren’t supposed to beat the Celtics. We were supposed to go home after Game 3,” the infamous afternoon when the Nets blew a 26-point third-quarter lead to Boston.

“We’ve got guys on this team nobody wanted or that people wrote off,” Kidd said. “We remember this stuff and we’ll keep remembering.”

It is the Lakers the Nets will play. The Nets have been made immediate 9-1 underdogs. And they should be. The Lakers won two pressure-packed games against another great team, games that make a team a true champion.

But here’s the problem. The Lakers will come to Staples Center Wednesday having heard three days of noise about how the three-peat has been three-peated, that by beating the Kings in the toughest, most emotional and hard-fought series the NBA has been presented with in many years, the heavy lifting is over and the victory tour is beginning.

This would be a mistake because the Nets have taken on Kidd’s personality.

Kidd is the most unemotional--meaning totally controlled on the court--leader around. Kidd will not flop or whine about foul calls, will not frown at a missed shot, will not pump a fist or leap for joy after a great play. Everything he feels, Kidd lets flow through his arms, his hands, his heart and into the basketball. Mr. Triple-Double has an unbendable will and unbreakable concentration.

Whether his teammates can make the best use of his passes, whether the Nets can find someone to guard Shaquille O’Neal, whether Kerry Kittles and Keith Van Horn will hit the open jump shots Kidd will get them, whether the bench players like Lucious Harris, Richard Jefferson and Aaron Williams will be as productive as they were in New Jersey’s six-game Eastern Conference finals victory over the Celtics ... all that remains to be seen.

But don’t dismiss the Nets. There has been an arrogance about the Lakers this season, a feeling that playing hard all the time wasn’t necessary or worthwhile, that another title was a birthright. The Kings proved that it isn’t. The Kings showed the Lakers that a team must play hard and well every night--and every minute.

Will the Lakers remember this by Wednesday?

The Nets aren’t tokens. They have come together and decided the world is against them and that the only thing to do is to keep winning. They have gained confidence through the playoffs.

Kidd will not take it as a moral victory that the Nets doubled their regular-season win total, from 26 last season to 52, or that they beat the hallowed Celtics and made it to the Finals.

He celebrated very little Friday night when the Nets clinched the East on Boston’s home court. Some players would have been extravagantly pushing their triumph into the faces of the Boston crowd at the FleetCenter. Members of that crowd had harassed Kidd’s wife into staying home for Game 6 and chanted ugly references to Kidd’s past.

Some players would have danced and shimmied, jumped on a table and waved his Net jersey in their faces.

“Why would I want to celebrate now?” Kidd said later. “Our business isn’t finished. We’ve got more to accomplish. No matter what people say, we are going to the Finals expecting to win even if no one else thinks we can.”

The Nets will have to contend with so much doubt. Kidd is right.

There is the history. The Lakers are Showtime, the team of bright lights and big stars and history, great history, both distant and recent. The Lakers are Primetime, TV darlings, the playground of Shaq and Kobe and movie stars and glamour girl cheerleaders.

The Nets play in an arena built on a swamp and are burdened with so much failure. They opened their NBA history by selling Julius Erving, the great Dr. J, to the Philadelphia 76ers for $3 million and a handful of beads. At least that’s what it seemed like. And they sold Dr. J so they could pay off the rival Knicks for the honor of competing in the same NBA vicinity as the Knicks.

Until this season, the Nets had won only nine playoff games in their NBA time and never a series.

This will all be noted by Laker fans. This will all be rehashed on talk radio this week. The Nets will be mocked. They’ll be mocked for drafting Kittles instead of Kobe Bryant. They’ll be mocked for playing just off a New Jersey turnpike exit, for having no identity except as bottom feeders.

It might be wise for the Lakers to listen to others. Listen to Kenyon Martin, Net forward, talk about Kidd:

“He is going to give you everything he has. He might go out and not make his shots but he’ll lead us in rebounding and get the big steal and then, right at the end, make the key shot.”

When Martin talks about Kidd, he is talking about himself too. And his teammates. A tough bunch and not to be ignored.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.

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How They Compare

*--* How Lakers, Nets fared in regular season: Lakers Category Nets 21-9 vs. East 35-19 37-15 vs. West 17-11 30-14 vs. playoff teams 23-21 32-14 vs. +.500 teams 25-22 26-10 vs. -.500 teams 27-8 34-7 Home 33-8 24-17 Road 19-22

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