LeBron James played the role of the villain today in his first game at Prudential Center since deciding he was taking his talents to South Beach.

The boos were heard early and often during the Heat’s 101-78 dismantling of the Nets.

James knows he’s going to be booed in most cities, but our guess here is Cleveland, New York and New Jersey will be the ones he hears it the loudest. They’re the three places that either feel the most abandoned (Cleveland), slighted (Cleveland) or just disappointed (all three) that they don’t have a franchise player wearing a No. 6 jersey.

“There’s never a time where we can’t be motivated going into any arena,” James said. “We know we’re going to get booed most of the night. It almost seems like we’ve won a championship already, but we haven’t done anything. When we go into other people’s building we want them to boo us.”

Ask and you shall receive, King James. But the reality is some of the boos is because they’re jealous.

James had a rousing, patented one-handed power dunk in the first half today that brought people out of their seats and created a buzz in the Prudential Center. The fans were glad they were here to see it and no doubt wished they could see it on a nightly basis.

But that wasn’t going to be. The Nets just didn’t have enough to get James over the summer and they didn’t have nearly enough to beat him yesterday.

You can point to so many things the Nets didn’t do today, but the biggest thing is they don’t have James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. The Nets would have had to have played a perfect game to beat a team with those three stars and they were hardly perfect.

“We just weren’t very good from the start,” coach Avery Johnson. “We were stuck in mud. We were stuck in second gear.”

There were times it seemed the Nets were stuck on Route 21 because they were nowhere near the Heat when they were on offense. Miami shot 67.7 percent in the first half and 54 percent for the game.

The Nets got a good game from rookie Derrick Favors, who had 13 points and 13 rebounds with 10 coming on the offensive end. Brook Lopez and Devin Harris combined for 33, but they were mostly quiet. Lopez scored 17 in the first half and just three after that. And the Nets’ starting forwards Travis Outlaw and Joe Smith were 0-for-7 with zero points.

But this was a case of when the Nets fell behind against this power they couldn’t do anything to catch up. The closest they got over the last 33:08 was 13 points.

“There’s a lot of stuff we talked about, but didn’t execute and that’s the reason why you saw the outcome you did,” Harris said.

“We just got down too deep, especially in that first quarter,” Johnson said. “I didn’t like the spirit of our team.”

The Heat’s spirit, on the other hand, was impressive.

They could have come in for this Halloween afternoon game and not been the most energetic team or not been up for this game. Also, it’s not like last season where teams got up for playing the Nets because they didn’t want to be the team to lose to them. The Nets already had two wins.

But James and company were juiced from start. He led the Heat with 20 points, seven rebounds and seven assists.

It could have been the crowd booing or James knowing this was a team that wanted him, did everything to get him, and he wasn’t going to not show up against them. James praised the Nets, saying they had “a great meeting” with him in Cleveland. But they just didn’t have enough.

Just like today.

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Coach’s Corner

“You’ve got to play better offense. I think we shot [34] percent in the first half, but we got 53 shots. You’ve got to play better offense. You’ve got to make their defense pay. You can’t allow James and Wade just be out there in a two-man zone.”

- Johnson on how to beat Miami.

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Follow me on Twitter: @Al_Iannazzone

 Al Iannazzone covers the Nets for The Record (Bergen County, N.J.)