Tough Love in New Jersey

Only 49 seconds had elapsed in the Nets' Nov. 9 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers when coach Avery Johnson began hollering for a timeout.

As his bewildered players approached the bench, Mr. Johnson's raspy, Louisianan inflection could be heard over the Prudential Center crowd. Brook Lopez, the team's 22-year-old center and franchise cornerstone, had disobeyed a direct order from the man known as The Little General, and he was going to hear about it.

"I was explicitly told through shoot-around, through practice yesterday, before the game today, not to bite on [Cleveland center] Anderson Varejao's pump fake," Mr. Lopez said after the game, explaining the reason for Mr. Johnson's tirade.

These not-so-friendly reminders are the price of playing for the Nets these days. They can be humbling, even verging on humiliating. Mr. Johnson spent one video session last week likening his team's toughness to that of tissue paper. Afterward, Mr. Lopez confessed, "He was practically looking at me." But the Nets players aren't complaining about this brand of leadership—they're craving it.

"You've got to trust him," swingman Terrence Williams said of Mr. Johnson, who was the NBA Coach of the Year with Dallas in the 2005-06 season. "He's not some guy that never coached in the NBA before and became the coach of the New Jersey Nets. It's a coach that's been around and everything that he says, I'm putting myself 100% into it."

Mr. Johnson's victories won't all take place on the hardwood this season. Some are happening in the minds of his players every day. "Part of what I'm doing here is trying to change a mentality and change a losing spirit," Mr. Johnson said.

"There's going to be growing pains, but you know it's clicked when it becomes habitual," Mr. King said.