When Alan Anderson woke up Saturday morning, he got a text message from a friend saying Brook Lopez was “out” and didn’t know what to think.
“I thought they meant outside, like out somewhere,” Anderson said after Sunday’s practice, shaking his head. “Then I saw it on the screen and called the trainers and said, ‘This can’t be right.’ But they said it’s right.”
The news Lopez was lost for the season after suffering a fractured fifth metatarsal in his right foot during Friday night’s loss in Philadelphia caught everyone by surprise. The center played the final 10 minutes of regulation and overtime after initially getting hurt when he got tangled up with Evan Turner and Thaddeus Young midway through the fourth quarter.
“No one knew,” Nets coach Jason Kidd said. “That just shows how tough Brook is.
“He told [Nets athletic trainer Tim Walsh] and our medical staff something was wrong, and they took [an X-ray] and found out what the problem was.”
Joe Johnson, who missed Friday’s game for personal reasons, said he saw Lopez grab his foot during the broadcast and got the news after calling the training staff Friday night.
“It’s definitely going to be tough for us to put it behind us, but as professionals we have to move forward,” he said. “It’s part of it. We all still have a job to do, and that’s to try to put this team in the best position possible.
“We have to go with what we’ve got. I hate to see Brook go down like that, but somebody else has to step up. It’s an opportunity for somebody else.”
Without Lopez — the team’s fulcrum on offense and rim protector defensively — the Nets will have to change their plan of attack moving forward. One thing they won’t be doing, however, is increasing Kevin Garnett’s minutes.
Though the Nets will slide Garnett over to center, Kidd said the Nets will be using the rest of their big men — Andray Blatche, Mirza Teletovic, Mason Plumlee and Reggie Evans — to replace the minutes and production Lopez gave them.
“We’ve got plenty of guys that can play the five, and handle it for us,” Kidd said. “This team was built on depth, and we’ll lean on that to get us some wins.”
Will the Nets play faster now that Lopez is gone for the season? Depends on who you ask.
When the subject of whether the Nets would play quicker now that Lopez and his massive presence at both ends is missing, Kidd said no.
“We’re not speeding things up with him or without him,” he said. “For us, scoring has not been the issue. It’s been being able to get stops and rebounds. That’s what we have to focus on.”
When the same question was posed to Johnson, however, he said that he did envision the Nets playing faster now that Lopez won’t be available.
“We have to go game-by-game, and matchup with who we are playing,” Johnson said. “I probably see us as a more up-tempo team.”
In a small piece of good news for Nets fans amidst the misery of Lopez being lost for the season, both Jason Terry and Andrei Kirilenko returned to practice Sunday, keeping them on track to return this week as both have been targeting.
“It’d be a big boost,” Johnson said. “When I think about us playing more up-tempo, we definitely need those guys.
[Kirilenko], who can play multiple positions, even the five, I think, would definitely help us out a lot. We need those guys to get healthy and get back out here.”