ATLANTA — The one bright spot in the Nets’ 109-95 lackluster loss to the Hawks last night was the return of Gerald Wallace.
The versatile forward came off the bench to play 15 minutes after sitting out the past two games with bruised ribs, and finished with four points, two rebounds and a steal.
Wallace — who suffered the injury midway through the first quarter of Friday’s win over the Suns when he fell hard after a foul from Phoenix forward P.J. Tucker after going up for a shot on a fast break — worked out on a court for the first time before Tuesday’s win over the Raptors in Brooklyn, and had been listed a game-time decision for last night’s game.
Before the game, interim coach P.J. Carlesimo said he didn’t want to start Wallace because he hadn’t practiced.
* Mirza Teletovic’s inspired play off the bench recently has given the Nets a lift, but it also highlighted one of the biggest problems currently facing Carlesimo.
Teletovic, who scored just three points in seven minutes last night, finished with 10 points, four rebounds and three assists in Tuesday’s 113-106 win over Toronto. He is one of five healthy big men Carlesimo had at his disposal, along with starters Brook Lopez and Reggie Evans and reserves Andray Blatche and Kris Humphries.
But a typical NBA rotation only has room for four bigs to get consistent minutes — and that doesn’t include any minutes that Wallace could take when he slides over to play power forward when the Nets downshift to smaller lineups.
The decisions facing Carlesimo moving forward were evident in last night’s game, as 12 different players saw time in the first half alone.
* While Joe Johnson made his debut against his former team last night, it also marked the first game against the Nets for Anthony Morrow, DeShawn Stevenson and Johan Petro since they were sent to the Hawks as part of the package Atlanta received to send the six-time All-Star to Brooklyn.
Stevenson finished with three points on 1-for-3 shooting in 21 minutes while Petro didn’t play and Morrow sat out with a lower back injury.
Another former Net, Devin Harris — dealt to Utah as part of the package to bring Deron Williams to the team in 2011 — finished with 18 points, four rebounds, five assists and four steals.