Utah coach Jerry Sloan was discussing how hard work and the desire to excel in all areas is what sets certain players apart.
“Look at 90 percent of the players. They’re the same player they were when they came into the league. [They think] ‘This is the only thing I can do, so try not to disturb me while I do my one little thing,’ ” Sloan said.
Consider Richard Jefferson of the Nets among the other 10 percent. He learned from one of the do-it-all masters, Jason Kidd.
“That’s what I learned from Jason,” said Jefferson, averaging 15.1 points and 6.3 rebounds entering today’s game against Orlando in the Meadowlands. “He’s a person you never know with his shot sometimes, but rebounding-wise, defensive-wise and passing the ball, you’re going to get that from him every night.”
As Kidd put it, “There’s always a category that you can fill up. . . . It’s just getting games under your belt and understanding that every night’s not going to be a night where you score 20 points. You’re going to have to find other areas.”
Jefferson is doing that. Call it maturity or experience, but Jefferson, 22, more and more displays a veteran’s grasp of game situations. Look at this week. In a win over Indiana, Jefferson did not shoot well (1-of-11). So he defended and grabbed 12 rebounds.
“That’s what you have to do. You have to make sure you find a way to help the team,” said Jefferson, in his second season, first as a starter. “The Indiana game, Al Harrington had a great first half (18 points) and we were getting killed on the rebounds. So the second half, even though I wasn’t hitting shots, I still rebounded and played much better defense on Harrington (4 points after halftime). That’s just what you have to do.”
Jefferson scored 25 points Friday in Washington. But his third best total of the season wasn’t enough to thwart 40-year-old Michael Jordan’s 43-point masterpiece that dealt the Nets an 89-86 defeat. So the Nets want to regroup against Orlando and the NBA’s leading scorer, Tracy McGrady, who’s coming off a 52-point game.
Last season, Jefferson was the Nets’ sixth man. That meant situational play.
“If we’re getting outrebounded, I’ve just got to go rebound. If we need somebody to spark some scoring, do some running, that’s what I did. If we needed a guy to go in and exert some energy on a leading scorer, that’s what I did,” he said. “When you’re the sixth, seventh man, you give whatever the team needs.”
What the Nets needed from Jefferson as a starter was to support the decision to trade Keith Van Horn.
“He’s grown up and he’s had to,” Byron Scott said. “He was thrust into a position as a starter and there’s a lot being asked of him at a very young age. His maturity level had to develop a lot quicker because of the need we had for him. . . . His maturity, he’s probably two, three years ahead of pace. If we kept the team intact as it was last year, we probably would have stunted his growth.”
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More progress for Dikembe Mutombo. “They’re going to allow me to start dribbling Monday,” said Mutombo, who said doctors told him his surgically repaired right wrist is “ahead of schedule” in its rehab. “I’ve still got to be able to push somebody, remove somebody from the post and block shots.” . . . Lucious Harris slipped talking about His Airness. He said the key to the Nets’ defeat was “Michael Jacks. . . er, Michael Jordan scored 40 some points.” What if Michael Jackson had dropped 40 on the Nets? “We’d really be in trouble.”