After being a fixture in the starting lineup for the first half of the season, Kris Humphries has spent the last three weeks battling both an initial benching by Avery Johnson, and then a pair of injuries.
But after sitting out a combined eight of the previous 11 games between the benching, a strained abdominal muscle and a sore left ankle, Humphries had 10 points and nine rebounds in 17 minutes off the bench in Sunday’s win over the Pacers in Brooklyn, a sign perhaps he’s ready to return to a consistent place in the Nets’ rotation.
“It felt good,” Humphries said Sunday about the ankle, which had held him out of three of the previous four games. “It’s still not 100 percent, but it felt good to contribute in a win like this and it’s nice to be out there.”
Johnson’s decision to bench Humphries against the Sixers on Dec. 23 in favor of Gerald Wallace at power forward in a smaller lineup turned out to be one of his final acts as the team’s coach before he was dismissed by owner Mikhail Prokhorov later that week.
Since then, interim coach P.J. Carlesimo has reverted to the bigger lineup the Nets employed for much of the season, opting to use Reggie Evans in the starting lineup while bringing Humphries off the bench when healthy.
Humphries, who averaged a double-double over each of the last two seasons for the Nets before signing a two-year, $24 million contract this summer, admitted that bouncing in and out of the rotation after playing in each of the first 25 games of the season has been difficult.
“It’s definitely tough to deal with injuries and not really be in the flow,” Humphries said. “But I was able to get it going tonight and contribute, and above all we won, so that’s one of the toughest things, being in and out of the lineup but still being effective.”
➤ Beginning today, the Nets can include both Humphries and Brook Lopez in trades. The rest of the roster had been available to be dealt since Dec. 15, but Humphries and Lopez were untradeable until today because of the size of the raise they received from their salaries from last year.
tbontemps@nypost.com