TORONTO – Put it this way. Todd MacCulloch simply couldn’t keep going and going and going …
The Nets center experienced some recurring discomfort in his left foot, the same plantar fasciaitis-afflicted spot that caused him to sit out 17 of 18 games in a month-long stretch during February and March.
After playing the 10 games before last night’s meeting with the Raptors here, MacCulloch was placed back on the injury list. He’ll recharge his battery, in his terminology, sitting out the last three regular-season games before the playoffs start this weekend.
“This is the type of thing that’s [best] described a little bit like a battery. There’s only so much juice. As you go on, the battery could be dead and when you come back, you want to try to space it out as much as you can,” said MacCulloch, who admitted there was some discomfort since he began playing again on Mar. 24 and who said surgery is a far off “last resort.”
But the foot became worrisome this week at practice. MacCulloch knew the juice was used up as the pain returned.
“I didn’t really have a great practice the other day in terms of how I was feeling,” said MacCulloch, who was replaced in the starting lineup by Aaron Williams, another less-than-healthy Net (he’ll face arthroscopic surgery on both knees this summer).
“I wasn’t feeling great, so they thought there was no point in me coming out here and re-aggravating something when we could give it some time to rest before the playoffs start … I’m really hoping that I’ll be much more ready to go,” MacCulloch added.
Ditto the Nets, who were 9-8 in the games MacCulloch missed (he actually dressed for one of those 17 games, but did not play). Donny Marshall (knee) was activated yesterday, filling MacCulloch’s spot on the active roster.
Byron Scott was very matter of fact about the move and said he was not unduly concerned. These final three games, while meaning more to others such as Toronto, which held the seventh spot entering the matchup, have little meaning for the Nets.
“I just want him to get some rest. We’re going to keep doing the treatments and the things that we’ve been doing on it to get it better,” said Scott, who had indicated he was considering placing two or three players on the injured list – including MacCulloch and possibly Williams and Lucious Harris – to heal their nagging injuries. “Todd is the one guy we felt needs more rest to get himself a little bit in better condition than anybody else right now.
“The thing I told Todd is we need him as close to 100 percent by Saturday as we can possibly get him,” Scott added. “He’ll do all the other stuff that we have to do as far as some of the walk through things and things like that. He won’t probably go through all the practice. He’ll do his cardio and his other stuff in the pool … but other than that we want that thing to be as healthy as possible for [the playoffs].”
MacCulloch, in 62 games, has averaged 9.7 points, 6.1 rebounds while shooting a team-high .531. He fully agreed with the decision, which basically was made by Scott, trainer Tim Walsh and team president Rod Thorn.
“It’d been bothering me a little bit . There was some time when I first came back that it felt pretty good. Then slowly I think some of the symptoms started to creep back, but not to the point where it was before, but to the point where definitely I didn’t feel normal out there,” MacCulloch said.
“So I just tried to do what I could and these guys took care of business, and some other teams did some things, so it gives us a longer period to rest.”