PHOENIX – He is known as the soft-spoken assassin of the Brooklyn Nets, a player with the steel nerves of a sniper that doesn’t flinch when it’s time to pull the trigger on a kill shot.
It turns out that Joe Johnson also is a take-no-prisoners leader.
The day before the Nets left for their Wednesday night game against the Suns in the Valley of the Sun, Johnson expressed his displeasure with the team’s performance to date.
It seemed out of character for Johnson, who by his own admission would rather let his actions do the talking, when he said that the Nets have been selfish on offense and do not have each other’s backs on defense.
“Let me say something to you all,’’ Kevin Garnett said of Johnson. “To be anything in this league, like he’s been throughout countless years, not just to be clutch, you can be soft spoken, you can be not heard, but you got to have a bit of a dog in you, if not demon, as I like to put it.
“You just don’t float and be successful at things by getting by being a nice guy. It’s funny, they say nice guys don’t finish first, and that’s true.
“You got to have some grit in you. And he’s no different from that. He’s one of our leaders. That’s for a reason.’’
Johnson talked the talk and Wednesday night in U.S Airways Center, he tried to walk the walk. Johnson scored a team-high 21 points, including a buzzer-beating layup at the end of the first half, but the Nets blew a 19-point first-half lead and fell 112-104 to the Phoenix Suns.
Johnson tried to pull the Nets back in the final minutes but he missed 5 of 6 shots in the final 7:11 and finished 7 of 16 from the field.
“I just tried to do what I normally do,’’ Johnson said. “I think everybody pretty much knows in the fourth quarter I’ve normally been the guy that does whatever it takes to help us get over the hump. Not just offensively, defensively.’’
The loss drops the Nets, who led 38-19, to 4-3. They play at Golden State on Thursday night.
Johnson believes the Nets are a championship team, one that should have gone into the game no worse than 5-1, and probably 6-0, based on the competition.
He knows that the Nets spent a good portion of last season digging out from a 10-21 start.
It was Johnson’s dramatic buzzer beater last November that gave the Nets a 100-98 win in OT, a win that snapped a three-game losing streak and temporarily staunched the bleeding.
He did it again Wednesday night. With 6.6 seconds left, the Nets inbounded the ball to Brook Lopez, who handed it off to Johnson. Johnson, the Swiss watch in his head ticking down, drove the length of the court and put in a layup with 0.6 left, giving the Nets a 63-49 halftime lead.
But after playing solid offensive team basketball in the first half, racking up 11 assists and scoring 63 points, the Nets had just six assists in the second half and scored 41 points.
“We got away from ball movement, from sharing the ball, and went to our stars to bail us out or to lead us,’’ said Garnett. “Obviously, these are growing pains.’’
KEY MOMENT: The Nets led 90-83 with 8:11 left before going stagnant on offense. The Suns responded with a 16-4 run to take a 99-94 lead.
KEY STATISTIC: Lionel Hollins emphasized at the morning shootaround and during the pregame interview session the importance of not turning the ball over. The Nets committed 19 turnovers.
TALK: “Tonight was a great example of what we don’t want to be like in terms of having a consistent four quarters,’’ said Garnett.