#Spencer Dinwiddie knows Nets’ underdog days are over

With the NBA Finals ongoing, the Nets, who are long since eliminated, know they haven’t won a thing yet. But that’s the goal.

“I don’t think anybody’s in the business of playing small, right? We understand the talent we have, we understand the expectations, we understand the championship-type of mentality,” Nets point guard Spencer Dinwiddie said on House of Highlights’ “Through the Wire” podcast.

“We also are realistic in the sense of, ‘Hey, everything’s a process, we don’t go out and make guarantees.’ But we want to put our best foot forward, and we believe in our talent and want to win. Obviously there’s no other reason to do this, to play this game, team up and all that stuff.”

That talent is about to get a boost, with Kevin Durant expected to debut after missing all of this season with a ruptured Achilles and Kyrie Irving saying he’s fully fit after shoulder surgery ended his 2019-20 campaign with just 20 appearances.

Knocked out in the first round of the past two playoffs — last year by the 76ers and in August by the Raptors — the Nets are a long way from being champions. But they acknowledge having Durant and Irving will make them targets and raise the bar.

Clearing that bar could require at least getting to where the Lakers and Heat are today, in the NBA Finals, or perhaps even winning the championship. And that’s a big difference from the plucky Nets that Kenny Atkinson coached and with which Dinwiddie broke in.

“Definitely, we understand there’s a difference between being an underdog, and we have a little bit of a target,” Dinwiddie said. “We can’t fully say we’re the champs or we have the team with the target or any of those things. But we do understand when KD and Kyrie are on the roster, immediately expectations on you are raised. So you have to meet those and hopefully exceed them.”

With those raised expectations, the Nets have become a win-now team. They sacrificed young All-Star D’Angelo Russell in July 2019 to create room for Durant and Irving. Dinwiddie personally helped recruit Irving and now finds himself constantly linked to trade rumors by fans on social media, despite averaging 20.6 points and a team-high 6.8 assists.

“It’s part of the business of the NBA,” Dinwiddie shrugged. “To feel forgotten about after averaging 20 points a game is an interesting experience. But it’s a lot better than feeling forgotten about and averaging four points a game. So you just roll with it and just try to plug in the best you can on the team that you’re on and figure it out day-by-day.”

In the case of plugging into a team with high-usage players like Durant, Irving and Caris LeVert, Dinwiddie likened his own game to an amoeba and implied he could adjust to fit with any high IQ teammates like these.

Dinwiddie also addressed his clear love of tweaking Knicks fans on social media, saying he’s not trolling so much as truth-telling.

“No, so it’s not really shots. Like, I tell the truth: Y’all just don’t like truth and it turns into this whole big [thing]. Hey look, if y’all are bums, y’all are bums,” Dinwiddie said jokingly, before shouting out former Nets teammate Theo Pinson, now on the other side of the East River with the rival Knicks.

“Y’all got my guy Theo Pinson. I know y’all bench is going to be lively and dancing and stuff. It’s gonna be phenomenal to see. Still going to get your heads cracked. It is what it is.”