Deron in for big changes, says Kidd

THE NETS admit they’re doing everything on the fly under Jason Kidd, searching for an identity and mostly losing in the process.

But here’s the latest revelation from Kidd, and the only surprise is that it took this long to see it implemented with the consistency of Saturday night’s victory over the Bucks: the Nets are running the offense through Brook Lopez, and the returning Deron Williams may have to adjust his vision of a free-flowing offense.

“This is who we are,” said Kidd when asked if anything changes when Williams returns from his ankle sprain, a move slated for Tuesday against the Celtics. “We have to get the ball inside.”

It’s boring. It’s slow. It’s part of the reason Avery Johnson was canned last season. But after all the offseason talk about a dynamic offense — and the Nets hired assistant coach John Welch to craft the offense after he was on the staff of Denver’s runand-gun team — Kidd admitted that Saturday night’s isolation strategy was Brooklyn’s identity.

It’s also something Williams recently declared was a losing approach. He has repeatedly made it clear that he’s no fan of isolation basketball.

“The way we were playing (last season) it's tough to win. It's tough to win, especially against good teams,” Williams said during preseason. “You can’t hold the ball and go one-on-one.”

Just to illustrate the incongruence, here was Kidd during his introductory press conference: “I want this team to explode early, get up and down. This is a team that can get to 100 points because we have that type of talent.”

Here was Kidd on Saturday night: “We’re not a team that’s going to zoom up and down and try to score 100 points every night.”

Here was Williams in the offseason: “It’s about ball movement. It’s about sharing the basketball. ... I definitely like to get out and run. That’s how we played in Utah (with the Jazz). I think that’s something we need to get back to.”

Here was Joe Johnson on Saturday night, when Lopez scored 32 points on 11-of-13 shooting: “We are playing in isolations.”

There’s the potential for conflict. If the Nets are committed to slowing down the game and becoming isolation-heavy like Saturday, Kidd will have to ditch those goals of Williams averaging double-digit assists and becoming an MVP candidate. Certainly part of the issue is that Kevin Garnett has been painfully ineffective on offense, and Paul Pierce might’ve been worse before he broke his hand.

Williams has proven to be an unreliable point guard anyway, sitting out all of training camp and all but 10 of the 27 preseason and regular season games because of three ankle sprains.

He is averaging only 9.3 points and six assists this season in nine games.