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Seth Curry sat out Tuesday’s game against Houston, but the Nets aren’t planning to shelve the sweet-shooting guard for the rest of the regular season.
With Curry dealing with a sore left ankle since before he arrived in a Feb. 10 trade from the 76ers, both he and the Nets admit a couple days of rest probably won’t be sufficient to solve the problem. Brooklyn doesn’t see a point in holding him out until the play-in, and hopes he can suit up Wednesday versus the Knicks.
“No, I think we’re hopeful that he plays [Wednesday],” Steve Nash said. “It’s an extra day’s rest, it’s a back-to-back, so if he was going to play one of these games it probably makes more sense to give him an extra day of rest to recover to play [versus the Knicks]. But we’ll see. We’ll see how he responds to these days. It’s sensitive, a tough position because rest will help. There’s no guarantee that rest is the cure in three-, four-, five-, six-, seven-, eight-day stretch. It might be an offseason-type thing.
“So he may be in this state, in this condition, for the remainder of the season. So trying to find him rest is definitely a priority for us, but also knowing that if we rest him it doesn’t mean that he comes back and plays one game and it’s all gone. It might be right back to where we started. So it is a little bit tricky to just hold him out indefinitely to try to believe that he’s going to be healed. That’s not what we believe. You know, he’s going to be healed. That’s not what we believe. He’s going to be fighting through this a little bit the rest of the way.”
The ankle injury has cut into Curry’s practice time, which in turn has hurt his consistency. Still, even when he hasn’t hit 3s his gravity has been invaluable. His impact on Brooklyn’s offense has been even greater than it was on Philadelphia’s.
The Nets have seen their effective field-goal percentage jump from 53.4 percent without Curry to 56.3 percent with him, their Offensive Rating vault from 113.4 to 119.8.
“Yeah, I think the time he takes to get better will be on him. I think he’s fine; he looks fine. We need him. I think as simple as that,” said Andre Drummond, who arrived with Curry in that same trade from the Sixers. “You take out one of our shooters, one of our veteran guys who knows the game very well, obviously. Seth has been very good for us so losing him is definitely a big hit.”
Goran Dragic is still in health and safety protocols, and remains stuck in Atlanta.
Bruce Brown (non-COVID illness) was available Tuesday after having been probable. But James Johnson (non-COVID illness) was downgraded to out shortly before tipoff after having been questionable.
Nash said Nic Claxton has made strides not only in consistency and conditioning, but also in terms of his hands, catching, finishing and rebounding in traffic.
Wednesday will mark the first time Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving play together as Nets at the Garden.
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