As the Nets spend these final few days of the regular season gearing up for the playoffs, there hasn’t been much worth watching. The team is focusing more on resting players with nagging injuries and managing minutes for those who suit up over the final three games — including Sunday’s 97-88 win over the Magic in Brooklyn — rather than the final score.
But one thing that has been worth paying attention to is coach Jason Kidd’s sudden logjam at center, where the Nets have three players — Kevin Garnett, Andray Blatche and Mason Plumlee — worthy of minutes. However, it’s likely only two will be given significant game action once the playoffs begin next weekend in either Toronto or Chicago.
“I don’t know if I can play all three of them, but we’ll try to play all three,” Kidd said before Sunday’s game. “But coming up on the playoffs, and especially the first round with it spread out, [Garnett will have] a little bit more rest, so we’ll see.
“Sometimes there might be an odd guy out, that’s just the way it goes.”
As of now, it appears the odd man out is going to be Blatche, not because of poor play, but because of how well Plumlee has performed since Garnett missed the entire month of March and some of April because of back spasms.
Until then, there would have been little doubt Plumlee would have been on the short end of a center rotation — as he was in January, after the Nets initially made the switch to the small-ball lineup that’s delivered them so much success.
Because that lineup features only one traditional big, Garnett and Blatche got the vast majority of the minutes, with Plumlee filling in whenever Garnett was given a night off as part of a back-to-back set, or when they were blowing out an opponent.
But Garnett’s injury opened up a door for Plumlee, who has taken the opportunity and run with it. Since replacing Garnett on March 1, he’s averaged nine points and six rebounds, including going for 17 and 11 in Sunday’s win. His numbers are even more impressive in April, when he’s averaged 11.6 points and 5.6 rebounds while shooting an absurd 82.6 percent from the field (38-for-46).
“I’m just anticipating when guys are going to hit me,” Plumlee said. “They’re hitting me in stride.
“It’s all [shots] right around the rim, so they’re shots I should be hitting at a high percentage.”
When Garnett returned April 5, it was assumed Plumlee would go back to being the third big man in the rotation, but so far that hasn’t been the case. Blatche didn’t play at all against the Hawks on Friday, a healthy scratch after missing the previous two games with an illness. Blatche then played less than seven minutes against the Magic.
But with the Nets set to face either the Bulls or Raptors — both teams that employ big lineups — in the first round, Kidd might be able to find a way to get them all minutes by playing two together at times. He did so in the second half of the second quarter Sunday, first putting Garnett and Blatche on the floor for three minutes before subbing in Plumlee for Blatche for another three.
“We haven’t done it in a while, so I wanted to see how it looked,” Kidd said. “We have different guys playing with one another, and it was all right.
“We haven’t played big, so that’s something we have to get used to if we’re going to do that in the playoffs.”
Shaun Livingston (sprained right big toe) sat out his third straight game, while Alan Anderson (sore abdominal muscle) missed his second in a row. In other injury news, the Nets got a scare in the third quarter when Paul Pierce left the game after catching an arm across the neck/shoulder from Magic big man Kyle O’Quinn. He left the game wincing and holding his right shoulder, which has given him trouble periodically over the past few months.
While Pierce spent the remainder of the game on the bench, he was laughing and joking the entire time, and Kidd said afterward Pierce had been cleared to return to the game, but it wasn’t necessary.