NBA

Lopez sprains ankle in Nets victory

Just as the Nets started to get healthy again, they suffered another injury.

Brook Lopez went down with a sprained left ankle in the third quarter and sat out the rest of the Nets’ 102-93 win over the Clippers in Brooklyn Thursday night, leaving his status for Friday night’s game against the Pistons in Auburn Hills, Mich., in doubt.

“It’s doing well,” Lopez said after finishing with 16 points and seven rebounds in 27:44. “I just twisted it a little, sprained it a little. I think I got hit by someone.

“I don’t really know what happened in the heat of the moment, but it’ll be all right.”

Lopez was posting up against Blake Griffin and stayed down after passing out to Joe Johnson for a 3-pointer. Lopez checked out of the game briefly, before then coming back in — again briefly — and then exiting the game for good and being escorted to the locker room by Nets trainer Tim Walsh.

“Yeah, I did,” Lopez said when asked if he felt good enough to come back into the game. “I was trying to buy some time, but when the play kept going I was telling [Deron Williams] not to foul.

“It was just a matter of me warming it back up, I think, but then Timmy did his job and sat me down.”

Lopez said he “absolutely” would play against the Pistons, but the last time he sprained his left ankle, on Nov. 15 in Phoenix against the Suns, he finished the game only to sit out the next seven.

“I’ll know more probably later [Thursday] or [Friday] morning, but it seems better [this time],” Lopez said. “Initially, last time I twisted it at least, it felt much more severe.”


Clippers coach Doc Rivers spent some time this summer speaking with Nets coach Jason Kidd, who picked his brain for whatever advice he could get and even traveled out to Los Angeles — ironically along with re-assigned assistant coach Lawrence Frank — for a coaching clinic Rivers was involved with.

Rivers said he told Kidd one thing more than any other.

“Just be himself,” Rivers said. “Coaching’s hard enough to try to coach for everybody. And you get so much advice when you coach. You’ve got to have your own thoughts, your own ideas and you have to just follow them.”

“Some of them are going to be wrong and you’ve got to live with them and then you move on. You can’t worry about being wrong, I told him that all the time. You’ve got to just do what you feel is right for the team and if you leave every decision that way, then good things will happen. If you start making decisions to keep players, people, or anyone else happy, it’s not going to go well.”

Rivers — who, like Kidd, also became a head coach without any prior coaching experience — also said he spoke to Kidd about the biggest thing he has learned since he began coaching in Orlando back in 1999.

“Patience,” Rivers said, “and my guess is it would be harder for him than me.

“I’m the average player. Jason was a whatever-time All-Star, with one of the best visions of all time. I would get impatient, especially when one of my guards didn’t see something. So I can’t imagine what Jason … I mean, he saw everything as a player.

“But listen … Jason is going to figure this all out. It’s just going to take time.”

Speaking of Frank — who worked under Rivers in Boston — Rivers expressed his dismay over the way Frank’s time with the Nets has gone, with Kidd abruptly announcing he would no longer be on the bench during games or present at practices, and that Frank would just be filing daily reports on the team’s games.

“It’s disappointing, frankly,” Rivers said, “because I’m a friend of both and I just wish they could have figured it out.”