With the Nets’ injury-ravaged season set to end April 26, there are 19 days yet to endure. Nineteen days. But who’s counting?
Deron Williams, for one.
After the Nets mauled the Wizards 110-98 Saturday night for their fourth win in six games — and their first two-game home winning streak all season — Williams was asked about the bad break that came with the presence of a lockout-shortened, 66-game season. Some would like to see more of what this group, including Gerald Wallace, could do.
“You would,” Williams said. “Nineteen days.”
So that’s who’s counting.
One thing is certain for the Nets (20-37) and Williams (19 points, 13 assists), who all along has said he intends to opt out of the final season of his contract for free agency. Those final 19 days will be played without Brook Lopez, suffering from a sprained right ankle. Shelden Williams was back for the Nets after missing four games with an eye injury, so naturally, somebody had to be ruled out for the season. And somebody was. The Nets officially pulled the plug on whatever remained in Lopez’s season.
“Brook will not play for the rest of this year,” general manager Billy King said. “He is healing nicely but with 10 games to go and him being a free agent and looking for the future, we’ll sit him down for the rest of this year. At this point in time, we are really not on the cusp of making the playoffs.
“By the end of the season he should be pretty healed. At the end of the season, we’ll do a CT scan.”
And so the Nets can play “what if?” for the past season, for the future. What if Lopez had been healthy all season and played with Deron Williams, then Gerald Wallace (19 points), the other Gerald, Green (nine points), Kris Humphries (12 rebounds) and the ever-improving rookies, Jordan Williams (7-of-7 shooting, personal best 14 points) and MarShon Brooks (18 points), who got a healthy taste of backup point guard?
“It would be a playoff team,” Deron Williams said. “I think so. I definitely think so.”
So now comes 19 days and a huge offseason — Lopez, who is a restricted free agent, was front and center in all Dwight Howard trade rumors. Lopez, who did not miss a single game in his first three seasons, broke his right foot during the preseason, sat 32 games, returned and then suffered a sprained ankle in his fifth game back March 4.
A later exam revealed a “line,” so he was shut down for two weeks before the Nets, after talking with Lopez and his agent, announced he would be the sixth Net to have his season terminated early. (Damion James, Jordan Farmar, since-released Keith Bogans, since-traded Mehmet Okur and Shawne Williams).
“It was a collective effort,” King said. “I talked to [agent] Arn Tellem in L.A. and we decided I didn’t want to make the decision for Brook because of him being a free agent,” King said. “But everybody thought it best for [him] not to risk anything the rest of this year.
“He understands that the future is more important. He’d like to play. But he knows there is a lot more basketball down the road,” said King, who envisions a solid future — whether it’s Howard or Lopez in the middle.
“We’re headed in the right direction,” King said enthusiastically.
Coach Avery Johnson agreed.
“We saw him have some pretty good games, especially the monster game he had in Dallas,” coach Avery Johnson said of Lopez. “I think he’s in a good place mentally. Physically, we’ve got him working out in the weight room. You’re going to see — eventually — a mentally stronger, physically stronger, more mature Brook Lopez. Just now is not the time.”
Neither is the next 19 days.