The Nets as we knew them are dead. The Nets we once knew were Micheal Ray Richardson checking into rehab, Kenny Anderson missing practice and Derrick Coleman summing it all up with what may as well have been an epitaph for the entire franchise: “Whoop de damn do.” The Nets, it should never be forgotten, sold Dr. J. 

In 2009, they lost their first 18 games, which cost coach Lawrence Frank his job and was a soul-sucking experience for everyone involved. 

“That was my first time being a part of something like that,” said Courtney Lee, who spent one season with New Jersey. “It was rebuilding. Management was changing. Lawrence Frank got fired. So everything was going in a different direction. In order to make changes, you've got to go through something in order to get better, and we were that something.”  

Those Nets are gone now, replaced with a new home in Brooklyn and a brand new arena. They are Deron Williams and Joe Johnson in the backcourt, Gerald Wallace on the wing and a healthy Brook Lopez at center. There’s an excitement now that rarely was evident in the swamps of Jersey. 

“I think it’s good for them,” Lee said. “They were in the Meadowlands forever. I was there that year we were running away from that record. You look at it now, you see the fan support is a lot greater than when I was there. Obviously the move, Jay Z’s behind it, the hype’s behind it, the new arena is bringing momentum to Brooklyn. It’s going to be good for them.” 

The Nets are different and they are much better, but the question that hung around TD Garden on Tuesday night was, how much better will they be? 

“They’ve had a heck of a summer,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. “They’ve obviously had a lot of game-planning about the summer because they had two game plans: The Dwight Howard plan and a secondary plan, which is still a pretty good plan. They’ve done it. They’ve pulled it off. I think the new arena and all that helped recruit players. I think it helped keep a player. I think Deron Williams, if they had stayed in Jersey, probably wouldn’t be there.” 

The Howard plan never materialized, but in its place is a solid starting five and a bench that has been cobbled together on the fly with intriguing pieces like a suddenly-in-shape Andray Blatche, who scored 23 points in the Nets’ 97-96 win over the Celtics. 

The C’s are believers. 

“I like Brooklyn,” Kevin Garnett said. “Brooklyn’s a very solid team. With Joe Johnson and with Deron and everybody, they’re going to be a force to be reckoned with. They’re nothing like last year. They’re going to be strong. I like their team.”  

The Nets have everyone’s attention, but now that the hard work and planning is done, the next step will have to happen and it will have to happen quickly. They have nine new faces and that’s not including Wallace and Lopez, who saw action in just 21 games between them last season. 

“That’s where we’re behind,” Nets coach Avery Johnson said. “We don’t have the experiences some other teams have. Not saying that ours is going to automatically lead to a championship, but it’s been done. Here in Boston where they were behind, they put it all together with Garnett and Ray Allen and some new guys. It’s been done, so it’s not impossible. We know there are a lot of teams that are far ahead of us and we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.” 

For Avery Johnson, there’s a new energy to everything associated with the team and it’s a chance to really do what he was brought to the franchise to accomplish. Simply put, he can coach again. 

“A lot of times it was about managing and being a salesman, but this year we really feel like we can just coach,” Johnson said. “All our guys are signed, sealed and delivered. It’s a breath of fresh air to see guys with the positive energy all around our campus. We don’t have a lot of the distractions that we had last year. We’re not trading for anybody.” 

The first big move was acquiring Joe Johnson from the Hawks for a handful of players who really weren’t part of the Nets' long-range plan. The trade-off is that Johnson is owed almost $90 million over the next four seasons. There’s a feeling around the league that Johnson and Williams can be one of the best backcourts in the game, if not the best. It will have to be, considering the Nets have almost $200 million tied up in their two stars over the next five years.

Lopez is a huge key, as are Wallace and Kris Humphries. It’s an interesting team, but as the coach conceded, one without an identity. 

“We definitely don’t have one yet,” Avery Johnson said.” We want to have a defensive identity. We think all championship clubs, you can’t be poor defensively and win a championship. At some point, you’re going to get exploited. Hopefully we’re going to have a defensive identity, but also an identity where we can score the ball, which leads to a balanced identity, and that’s something we’re definitely not going to get just in the preseason. You’ve got to get it by making the playoffs and winning some playoff series. It’s not going to come by osmosis. It’s going to take a lot of hard work.” 

The bottom line for the Celtics is that their division no longer can be taken for granted. It’s not just Brooklyn, either. The 76ers added Andrew Bynum, and for all the old-man jokes, the Knicks certainly are deeper than they were last season. Even the Raptors should be improved with new point guard Kyle Lowry and rookie center Jonas Valanciunas. 

“This is a deep division,” Paul Pierce said. “One of the deepest I’ve seen since I’ve been a Celtic, so it will be a challenge for us night in and night out.” 

A new era is beginning, and in a weird way, it seems to have galvanized the Celtics just as much as their new competition. 

“I think the division’s gotten a lot stronger,” Garnett said. “It’s going to be fun.”

Imagine that. Fun and the Nets in the same sentence, only this time it's not a joke.