Harden says Big 3 will need to sacrifice to win title

Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden are now teammates, which means they will each have to sacrifice.

“Sacrifice” is the newest buzzword around the Nets, with three stars capable of shouldering entire offenses joining forces in hopes of winning a championship. There will be no championship if these stars can’t co-exist, and in order to co-exist, there must be give and take.

“Chemistry. Sacrifice and we’re all elite,” Harden said in his first press conference as a Net. “So depending on the game, and depending on what is going on

throughout the course of the game, that is going to determine who gets the ball and who makes the plays. We’re all unselfish. We’re all willing passers. And we play basketball the right way, and that’s all that matters.”

Things got off to a great start on Saturday night, even as Irving has not yet returned to the team as he’s sitting out for “personal reasons.”

Harden started his Nets career playing unselfishly, scoring 32 points, dishing out 14 assists and collecting 12 rebounds. Durant was dominant with 42 points.

Harden says he’s unselfish, but he was required to be the end-all, be-all in Houston each of the past eight seasons. He has ranked at or near the top of the league in usage rate over each of those seasons, and usage rate is a measure of how much of one team’s offense an individual player is responsible for.

That will no longer be the case. This Nets team now belongs to Durant, who has proven he is every bit the dominant superstar who won back-to-back Finals MVPs before rupturing his Achilles in Golden State.

So, Harden now has more help than ever before, except maybe the Oklahoma City Thunder team that also featured Durant, Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka. Those Thunder, though, were still early into their careers. The Nets’ stars are fully formed.

“I think all of us are very, very smart, are very unselfish, and we know what’s at stake,” Harden said. “Each game is going to be different, but I think as time goes on, since we’re not really practicing, as we get a feel for throughout the course of games, that it should be a lot easier because all of us are unselfish and we want to see the next man succeed.”

That’s why sacrifice will be necessary — players who are used to doing it their way or the highway will have to do it as a collective.

“I think it’s about finding the best way to jell and be efficient together. So they’re all going to take a slightly less volume approach to play now,” Nets head coach Steve Nash said. “There’s still plenty of shots to go around, there’s still plenty of opportunities to make plays to go around. It’s not going to be in the same format that it was before that they were largely the No. 1 focal point. It’s going to be much more spread between the three of them, and they also have to make their other teammates better and they will do that.”

Nash noted that there’s too much at stake for these three not to have learned from mistakes past. Harden saw the difficulties of leading a team in Houston, Irving in Boston and Durant now with a team to call his own in Brooklyn (though he says it’s less his and more “ours”).

“Part of that is just starting out with really stripping down what are our motives here together? What are we here for? What do we want to accomplish,” Nash said. “Once we get on the same page there, which I believe we are, you can start building and assessing how this is going to work and making it a process. It’s not something that has to look perfect next week.”

Harden was asked what he brings to the Nets team, and he started with, “an elite player. An elite teammate. An elite leader.”

What he said next will make or break this Brooklyn team: “And just a guy that is willing to do whatever it takes to rack up as many wins as we can. Sacrifice.”