Roughly seven months after being dropped by an ankle injury deemed career-threatening — if not career-ending — Nets swingman Keith Bogans faced his first 5-on-5 during the preseason, matched up against teammate Jerry Stackhouse.
“He’s a physical guy,” Bogans said, laughing. “The next day, I felt like I got hit by a bus. I couldn’t move for a week.”
Those aches and pains were nothing compared to what Bogans had endured.
Last Feb. 8, in his fifth game with the Nets, Bogans dropped like a rock to the Prudential Center court. He remembers athletic trainer Tim Walsh’s silence delivering bad news.
“I could tell by Timmy’s facial expression before he even said anything that I did something wrong,” Bogans recalled.
The outlook didn’t improve the next day in the doctor’s office.
“They told me if the outside was fractured, I’d be fine, but if the ligament on the inside was torn, I was done for the season. The doctor came back in, told me it was torn,” said Bogans, 32, who suffered a torn left deltoid ligament as well as a fractured ankle. “I just got up and walked out. I didn’t even listen to what else he had to say. I was devastated.”
But devastation fed determination. The 6-foot-5 Bogans, who in 2010-11 started all 82 games as the Bulls finished atop the East (he still doesn’t know why he was waived), worked fanatically to return. The defensive and 3-point-shooting specialist kept working, targeting a spot in Brooklyn. Eventually, the Nets re-signed him for the veteran’s minimum ($1.35 million) for his 10th season. He has been a bargain.
He made his 15th start of the season in last night’s 113-106 victory over the Raptors with Gerald Wallace nursing bruised ribs. Bogans’ name doesn’t leap from the boxscore. But if ever there was a “little things” guy, it’s him.
Early, when the Nets’ offense ran with the precision of a drunk’s dart throws, Bogans’ defense stopped a 3-on-1 fast break. He drew a charge. He frustrated Toronto’s leading scorer DeMar DeRozan. In the third quarter, his 3-pointer put the Nets up nine.
“He defended very well right from the beginning,” interim coach P.J. Carlesimo said. “He played a very solid game, more the floor game, exactly what we need when the other guys are going good, even more important when we weren’t making shots because it kept it from getting out of hand.”
Bogans’ role, precisely.
“The guys look to me as an energy guy, especially defensively,” said Bogans, who finished with seven points, three assists and three steals. “Get up into a guy, make him work. And I just try to play with that energy and have guys feed off me.”
That’s a long way from hearing “career-threatening” injury.
“I just remember that phrase and thinking about the possibility of not being able to do the thing I love the most: play basketball,” Bogans said.
He has been second on the Nets to Joe Johnson in 3-point efficiency. And there’s the defense, all possible through a maniacal work ethic.
“I was with him this whole summer when I was working out for the Olympics,” Deron Williams. “Even when I got back, Keith was here a lot. I saw how hard he was working. He’s been great, one of our best perimeter defenders.”
Not bad for a guy whose career looked finished last February.