Plumlee played for the Nets’ summer league team and provided one of the tournament’s early highlights when, during a game against the Detroit Pistons, he spun into the lane and made a thunderous two-handed dunk over his defender. It underscored the notion that his athleticism — his ability to run the court and leap — was his best trait.

Perky Plumlee said Mason’s best trait was his determination. Of his three sons — a third brother, Marshall, 21, plays for Duke — Perky said Mason was the most focused and tenacious. Before he was old enough to play on the local grade school team, he insisted on being the manager. As a little leaguer, he taught himself how to throw different pitches by reading a book. He was an elite swimmer before junior high school, attending 6 a.m. practices. But he also squeezed in time to shoot basketballs before school.

“This may sound boring,” Perky Plumee said, “but Mason was a very obedient kid.”

The tenacity has come in handy. The Nets held their training camp in Durham to get away from the distractions and news media attention in New York. But Plumlee was perhaps the one player who found no respite.

Before the first practice, Nets Coach Jason Kidd told Plumlee to introduce Kidd’s counterpart at Duke, Mike Krzyzewski, to his Nets teammates. After the first couple of practices, Plumlee was surrounded by television cameras. Each day thereafter, he did interviews with student reporters and local news media. In between, he made time to see his former teammates, coaches and teachers, as well as his younger brother.

“If we would have gone anywhere else, I would haven’t have been talked to at all,” Plumlee said, laughing.

Above all else, he has tried to adjust to the N.B.A. He has had to digest the idiosyncrasies of the Nets’ system while also being expected, as the rookie, to run errands for his teammates.

“Like I told him, ‘listen first, slow to speak,’ ” said Jason Terry, a 36-year-old guard.

The demands, it seemed, were unending. After practice Friday, Plumlee held a microphone and interviewed General Manager Billy King on camera for the Duke athletic department Web site. (“That was good!” Plumlee said to King afterward.) After that, it was another camera, another lengthy interview.