Nets begin life without leading scorer LeVert
NEW YORK >> Life without LeVert began on Wednesday for the Brooklyn Nets.
It wasn’t pretty.
After the Nets lost shooting guard Caris LeVert, their leading scorer, to a gruesomelooking subtalar dislocation of his right foot that thankfully wasn’t quite as bad as it looked and won’t require surgery, the rest of the team was left to fill the void of his 18.4 points per game starting with a Wednesday night matchup at Barclays Center against the Miami Heat.
One 120-107 loss later, and one that perhaps wasn’t quite as close as that score indicated, and it would appear that Brooklyn hasn’t quite figured out how to do that just yet.
“It’s a domino effect, it goes right down the line,” said Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson. “And it effects your bigs too, you get a guy out of the rotation, a guy who’s playing 32 minutes a game, you’ve got to figure out how you fill that. You might have to play small some, it just changes things up… we’ve all got to give one percent more, coaches too. Everyone’s got to add a little piece. That’s how we’re built, that’s out team philosophy. And guys will. Sometimes, extraordinary things happen when you’re absent a player or two — we’re absent two starters (Wednesday) — unexpected guys step up and the team comes even more together.”
With injury comes opportunity, and that was the case for both forward Rodions Kurucs and guard/forward Dzanan Musa, both of whom were called up from the G-League’s Long Island Nets prior to the Miami game.
Musa, the 29th overall pick in this year’s NBA Draft, had played in four games for Long Island, averaging 21.3 points, 6.3 rebounds and two assists in a little over 33 minutes per game.
Kurucs, who the Nets selected 11 picks after Musa, had appeared in just one G-League game, collecting six points, seven rebounds and three assists in 19 minutes of action.
Playing time in the NBA has proven to be far more scarce; Musa went 0-for-1 from the floor with one rebound in 3:04 on the floor late in the loss to Heat, while Kurucs tallied two points, two rebounds and a steal in 7:08. For both, getting less playing time while trying to maximize what time they do get in an effort to move up the rotation has been an adjustment.
“The most important thing for me was that I got reps (in the G League) and we win the games,” Musa said. “That was the best way for me to get back. I see nothing but positives from going there, there was a lot of talent in that league, especially on our team. But at this moment, my only goal is to get back in Brooklyn for good…I’m a player who’s gone through a lot in my career, so I’m ready for anything. I’m ready to get put in the fire, I’m ready to sit on the bench. Whatever the coach and the team needs to me to do, I will do.”