‘Back’ to square one
Simmons dealing with more nerve pain, though not expected to sit long
Nets point guard Ben Simmons has been diagnosed with nerve irritation in his back and will be sidelined while he recovers. His agent, Bernie Lee, told The Post the former All-Star is essentially day-to-day.
The injury — which cropped up after Brooklyn’s Nov. 6 game against Milwaukee — isn’t expected to require surgery or a long-term absence.
“Ben had an MRI in the last couple of days, and it’s shown us that he’s experiencing some nerve irritation issues on the lower left side of his body, which is going to cause him to miss to some time as he rehabs and builds himself back from that,”
Lee told The Post.
“He’s not experiencing anything similar to what he’s gone through in the past or what he went through last year, and this is something that the expectation is that with the proper kind of rehab he’ll be able to resume his season in a short period of time without any issue.”
Simmons will miss a minimum of seven days.
“He’ll be out for at least a week,” Nets coach Jacque Vaughn said. “Ben was day-to-day … got to a point where obviously he wasn’t playing, so we want to be extremely thorough. Had a MRI [Monday], which was read [Tuesday] which showed left impingement, left side impingement. We’ll look at him a week from now. He’s been getting treatment, he’ll continue to get treatment, hopefully responds to that.”
Hearing Simmons and “back” in the same sentence is worrisome after back woes limited him to just 42 ineffective games over the past two seasons.
But after Simmons required May 2022 surgery on multiple herniated disks, then a nerve impingement that shut him down last season, this is a different scenario. It’s on the lower left portion of his back and won’t require any procedure.
“It’s not what he experienced last year at all,” Lee told The Post. “No procedure required. It’s just a period of rehab that’s going to be required to let the area calm down and then it’d be a period of obviously rebuilding him to restart his season.”
Tuesday’s 124-104 win over Orlando was the fourth straight game Simmons has missed, and fifth this season.
“It definitely should be on the shorter side of things. It’s really a day-to-day kind of evaluation situation,” Lee told The Post. “Really what has to happen is the area has to calm down. Once it calms down, then there’s a period of reactivity that’s built into things. And then it’s how his body responds to that, and getting him back into obviously game shape and all those kinds of things.
“Obviously, based on Ben’s history, there will be a conservative approach to this. We all saw the way he began the season: He started really, really well. He’s obviously a significant portion to the Brooklyn Nets, and he and the Nets remain on the same page to continue to work hand in hand to help him fulfill the requirements that the Nets have for him to be a really positive member of the team.”
In the half-dozen games he played, Brooklyn has averaged 118.2 points — 22.8 on the fast break — and shot 40.7 percent from behind the arc. But in the games he sat, the Nets got bogged down in the halfcourt and were far less effective, mustering just 105 points — 11.3 on the break — and hit 33.3 percent fr
When Lee was pressed on whether the latest injury would be something that would keep Simmons out for months, he reiterated multiple times it wouldn’t, citing caution because of the 27-yearold’s history.
“I always take the positive route and look at it as this is just a bump that’s in his road right now that happened,” Vaughn said. “Not like he wanted it to happen. He was playing, playing well, and this happened. Everybody’s body is different and this is what he’s dealing with. We’ll support him while he’s dealing with it. But I’m going to take the positive route and hopefully a week from now he’s feeling better and we’ll see him back on the court, playing at the level he was playing at.”