- After Kyrie Irving was a late scratch on Monday due to a tight hamstring, Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson explained that the team is just being “cautious” with the star guard, per Brian Lewis of The New York Post. However, Atkinson did acknowledge that the issue had been nagging Irving for a few days.
- Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News says it’s ridiculous to claim the Nets are better without Irving and argues that some of the criticism Kyrie is facing for recent comments is unfair.
- As Anthony Puccio of Nets Daily details, Jarrett Allen isn’t holding any sort of grudge toward Kyrie Irving after the Nets‘ point guard failed to mention the big man when he listed several of the team’s core players. “What do I expect him to do, name the whole team? That’s really the only comment I have on that,” Allen said. “… We talked about it. He ended up saying everything is fine, so no bad blood.”
- In a pair of stories for NetsDaily, Chris Milholen checks in on Nets youngsters Chris Chiozza and Jeremiah Martin. The two point guards are aiming to earn a longer look from the NBA club after recently replacing Henry Ellenson and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot as Brooklyn’s two-way players.
The Nets are happy with Kevin Durant‘s progress in rehabbing his surgically repaired Achilles, even though there are still no plans for him to play this season, writes Brian Lewis of The New York Post.
Durant went through a 25-minute workout this afternoon at Barclays Center and told Lewis that it went well. Coach Kenny Atkinson said seeing him on the court is having a positive effect on his teammates.
“He’s progressing. I know he’s working extremely hard,” Atkinson said. “He’s a quiet personality, but when he needs to say something, he says it. Usually what he says is spot-on. We don’t want to bother him too much because he’s locked into his rehab. He’s a guy who likes to work in the shadows. He doesn’t want all the attention, but he’s working his tail off.
“When he walks in the room, we all become more confident even though he’s not playing — it’s just that way. I enjoy talking to him about the game and his opinions about what’s going on in the league. ‘Hey, what is this team doing? Did you see this? What do you think about this player?’ It’s a real treat for me to have a guy like that around and for our players. They love it. He’s around all the time, so it’s great.”
When the Nets signed Durant in July, they understood it was very unlikely he would be able to suit up for them this season. The ruptured Achilles that he suffered during the NBA Finals comes with a long recovery process, and both parties agreed the best way to protect Brooklyn’s four-year, $164MM investment in Durant was to let him take the entire season to recover.
Atkinson confirmed to Lewis tonight that the plan hasn’t changed.
“No, I think we’re all on the same page. That’s not going to happen,” he said. “Progressing. I don’t have my medical book up here. I can’t give you what stage or any of that. It’s great when you’re there every day. You see incremental progress. That’s all I can give you.”
Nets‘ center DeAndre Jordan suffered a dislocated middle finger earlier this week but the injury will not require surgery, tweets ESPN’s Malika Andrews. Instead, the veteran big man will be re-evaluated next week.
Without Jordan in its lineup, Brooklyn will need to rely heavily on the young tandem of Jarrett Allen and Nicolas Claxton. The Nets will face the Bucks, Sixers and Lakers in their next three contests, so the absence of Jordan will sting.
In the first year of a four-year, $40MM deal he signed with Brooklyn, the veteran has been a stabilizing influence. Primarily a backup for the Nets, Jordan has served as a mentor while averaging 8.0 PPG and 9.7 RPG in 21 minutes per contest.
Nets guard Kyrie Irving clarified comments he made earlier in the week and insisted he wasn’t pressuring the front office to make significant changes before next month’s trade deadline, Malika Andrews of ESPN reports. However, he did hint that changes need to be made in the long run in order to become a serious title contender.
Irving said on Friday that in his previous comments he was simply giving a forthright assessment of the team’s current plight. Brooklyn is four games below .500 and currently sits in the eighth spot in the Eastern Conference.
“I think we have championship aspirations,” Irving said. “Do we want to be the eighth seed going into the playoffs? The seventh seed? But you’re able to be real with the team that you have here, and you’re able to collectively, cohesively come together as a group. That is what you figure out. But the goals are still to win a championship. I don’t come in every day to be mediocre or to be in the middle of the standings.”
Irving told the media on Wednesday after back-to-back losses that the team’s weaknesses were “glaring” and that additional pieces were needed in order to reach the next level. At the time, Irving named Kevin Durant, DeAndre Jordan, Garrett Temple, Spencer Dinwiddie and Caris LeVert as key pieces but left out other rotation players, including Jarrett Allen, Taurean Prince, and Joe Harris.
Irving spoke with teammates about those comments and said that failing to mention certain players was just an oversight on his part. However, he does believe the roster as currently constructed won’t be enough to put the Nets over the top.
“I reached out to make sure nothing was taken out of context — making sure that the guys knew exactly what I meant,” Irving said. “And that is the only thing that matters. Everyone can say, ‘If I was in this position, I would’ve said this, I would’ve done this.’ … The most important thing is making sure these guys — they have the belief in themselves and I continue to reiterate that confidence we have as a team. It is going to come down to that in order to be at a championship level to compete against the West, we need more.”
Following the Nets‘ second loss in two nights on Wednesday, Kyrie Irving told reporters, including ESPN’s Tim Bontemps, that the team needs to do more work on its roster to become a championship contender.
“I mean, it’s transparent. It’s out there. It’s glaring, in terms of the pieces that we need in order to be at that next level,” Irving said. “I’m going to continue to reiterate it. We’re going to do the best with the guys that we have in our locker room now, and we’ll worry about all the other stuff, in terms of moving pieces and everything else, as an organization down the line in the summer.”
Of course, the Nets are currently missing their most talented player, as Kevin Durant will spend the entire 2019/20 season recovering from a torn Achilles. However, it didn’t sound as if Irving’s comments applied specifically to this season. The star point guard implied that Brooklyn would need more help even after Durant returns.
“Collectively, I feel like we have great pieces,” Irving said. “But it’s pretty glaring we need one more piece or two more pieces that will complement myself, K.D. (Kevin Durant), D.J. (DeAndre Jordan), G.T. (Garrett Temple), Spence (Spencer Dinwiddie), Caris (LeVert), and we’ll see how that evolves.”
Irving’s comments are interesting for a few reasons. For one, his list of core players who need to be complemented didn’t include guys like Jarrett Allen, Taurean Prince, and Joe Harris. Allen is viewed as a young building block for the franchise, Prince signed a contract extension in the fall, and the Nets are expected to try to re-sign Harris later this year. It’s possible that Irving not mentioning any of those players was just an oversight, but it’s still worth noting which names he listed and which he didn’t.
Additionally, the Nets’ flexibility to make roster upgrades going forward will be limited, based on the commitments they made this past offseason to players like Durant, Jordan, and Irving himself. Brooklyn projects to be well over the cap and perhaps over the tax threshold in 2020/21, and general manager Sean Marks and team owner Joseph Tsai have both recently said that the team is prepared to go into the tax in order to build a roster capable of contending for a championship.
Still, spending at that level means the Nets would only have the taxpayer mid-level exception available to make a meaningful addition in free agency. Trading rotation players may be the club’s only other avenue to an upgrade.
With Durant out for the season, the Nets are unlikely to make major changes to their roster at this season’s deadline in an effort to push for a title immediately. But it will be interesting to see how the front office responds in the summer to Irving’s assessment of the roster.
G League guard Jeremiah Martin has signed a two-way contract with the Nets, the team announced on Twitter, barely beating the deadline for this season.
An opening was created earlier tonight when Brooklyn gave a 10-day contract to two-way player Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot after letting Justin Anderson‘s 10-day deal expire.
Martin, 23, signed an Exhibit 10 deal with the Heat over the summer after going undrafted out of Memphis. He was waived before the season began and joined Miami’s G League affiliate in Sioux Falls, where he averaged 18.5 PPG in 21 games.
The Nets won’t re-sign Justin Anderson to a second 10-day contract, tweets Michael Scotto of Bleacher Report.
His roster spot will go to two-way player Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, who has been playing regular minutes lately and has about a week left on his 45-day NBA limit. Luwawu-Cabarrot will be given a 10-day contract, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link).
Anderson signed with Brooklyn on January 6, so his 10 days expired tonight. The small forward appeared in three games, averaging 5.7 minutes per night and scoring three total points. The Nets were the fourth NBA stop for Anderson, who played for the Hawks last season and has spent time with the Mavericks and Sixers.
Anderson, who had been playing for Raptors 905 before signing with Brooklyn, is expected to return to Toronto’s G League team, tweets Blake Murphy of The Athletic.
Spencer Dinwiddie was confident last season that Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant were coming to Brooklyn, former Nets teammate Ed Davis tells Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News. Davis, now with the Jazz, said Dinwiddie began talking about landing the star free agents before last year’s All-Star break.
“Spence knew,” Davis said. “My locker was right next to Spencer’s too so we used to talk all the time. And he was saying that early. So we knew it was a good chance.”
Bondy notes that Dinwiddie may have diminished his own role in Brooklyn by recruiting Irving. Dinwiddie was putting up All-Star numbers while Irving was sidelined with a shoulder impingement, but they will now share playmaking duties.
“We’re just going to go with the flow,” Dinwiddie said. “We’re just going to go with whoever is hot in the moment.”
There’s more from Brooklyn:
- Echoing comments earlier this week from general manager Sean Marks, Nets owner Joe Tsai told Brian Lewis of the New York Post that he’s willing to pay the luxury tax in order to compete for a title. “I think the fans expect that we win a championship. And the good thing is I believe that we do have the pieces in place,” Tsai said in a YES Network interview. “Now we have some injuries and people are coming back. But the fundamental pieces are in place to perhaps go all the way, so I’m absolutely comfortable that if we pay the luxury tax, that’s fine.” Lewis points out that the Nets are slightly below the $143MM cap threshold for next season, but that figures to change once they re-sign Joe Harris and fill out the roster.
- Durant answered fans’ questions on Twitter this week about his recovery from a ruptured Achilles, Lewis adds in the same story. Durant discussed the “everyday grind” of rehab and how difficult it is to be away from the game. “It gets better everyday, but (it’s) good to have patience,” he tweeted.
- Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot returns to Philadelphia tonight in a stable situation for the first time since the Sixers traded him in 2018, observes Alex Schiffer of The Athletic. Luwawu-Cabarrot is on a two-way contract with Brooklyn and has helped the team stay afloat through injuries. He has about a week left on his 45-day NBA limit, leaving the Nets with a decision about whether to give him a standard contract to keep him on the main roster.
- In an interesting piece for ESPN.com, Malika Andrews of ESPN.com examines how DeAndre Jordan‘s gregarious personality and positive locker-room presence factored into the Nets‘ decision to invest $40MM in him this past summer. “We knew we were wading through some uncharted waters where we’ve never been before — where expectations are a little bit bigger,” GM Sean Marks said. “To have a guy like DJ, who can hopefully keep the mood light behind the scenes is — it’s really important.”
- Within Andrews’ article, Marks acknowledged that the Nets expect to become a taxpaying team next season. The GM suggested that Brooklyn’s investment in Jordan was related to the fact that 2019 was one of the last opportunities the club will have for a while to use cap room. “We’re going to be a tax team,” Marks said. “We are married to that. There’s a limited amount of times and ways you can continue to add to your team. You better do it now. You’re gearing up for a run.”