Jameer Nelson was an All-Star last season. As I discussed last week, Jameer looks like he’s ready to go. He discussed his injury, his new teammates, showed off his personality and more at Media Day Monday.
On re-establishing what he had before his injury
"Well like I said, it’s just one step at a time. I know who I am as a player. I know what I can do. The first thing you have to understand is to know your game and I know my game so as long as I stay in attack mode, everything else will fall into place."
On how quickly he can back to that level
"How quickly? Got to play a game first. This training camp will help. Every day I have to approach it as me getting better. It’s just me attacking. In the finals, I wasn’t 100%. I wasn’t able to do certain things but like I said, I’m back being able to do those things I could do early last season this year."
On the finals
"I knew I wasn’t going to be 100%. With the type of injury I had, that was impossible for me to be 100% at that time."
What he plans on doing to take the next step
"Just continue to play my game. Take more of a leadership role in terms of being more vocal."
On if last year’s early finals talk seemed far-fetched.
"Not for us. That’s what people don’t understand. We believed in ourselves and we believe in one another. People can say what they want about it. They can say we’re not contenders. They talk about the other two or three teams in the east and really forget about us. And that’s what happened last season. That’s fine with us because we fly under the radar and get all the wins."
On the offseason
"It was different. I never went through that many changes in terms of my career here. Over the last four or five years, we’ve probably only had seven or eight new guys and we get seven or eight in one year. It’s a little different but it’s a business and what that tells you is what we want to do is win. We want to win right now and not prepare ourselves for three years later. We want to win now.We’ll see (if we’re a better team). Our team worked really hard last year to get to where we got and we earned everything we got last year and we have to do the same with this team. Last year should be out our mind and put behind us. We have to take it one step at a time and that will really determine the team we have."
On if things will change
"No. We’re still the same team. We still have the same make-up and our core guys including Vince. Everybody, including our core guys have to play our role.We still have the same system. Everything we do, it’s no surprise to anybody out there in the league with what we do. We got the ball do the big guy or we kick it out for a three or we take the ball and get the best available shot that we can get as long as it’s a good shot. We put a lot of pressure on our defense so we can create for our offense."
On his time in Philly with teammates
"I don’t really ever give out name but it was, I think 10 of us. Some of the guys couldn’t make it because of prior engagements, but we had a good time, it turned out good.Paintball, we did bowling, we did dinner every night. We just had fun. We did things that you do when you’re a kid."
On his home run in batting practice with the Phillies
"That was fun. Nobody believed I could do it but since Coach is a big baseball fan, he called me immediately. He had to confirm it and make sure I did it."
On Brandon Bass
"He’s going to be great for us. He’s a guy we really needed with the energy level he brings, the toughness. The physical nature of his game is definitely needed to help out Dwight. Because we play with a somewhat smaller four man that will give us the best worlds."
Jameer looks ready to go. He has a great toughness and natural confidence about him. His clean bill of health would have instantly made this team much tougher and much better even without all the new additions.
Next up: JJ Redick
(Andrew Melnick is Howard the Dunk’s lead blogger. Subscribe to his RSS feed and add him on Twitter to follow him daily.)