Brevin Knight is pretty serious when it comes to basketball. Watch his face when he’s racing around the court and you’ll usually see an all-business expression or, in those dark moments when he believes the calls are going the wrong way, one of the harshest scowls in the NBA.

These days he’s all smiles.

The contrast is not lost on Knight, a 10-year veteran guard. And after an extended, injury-induced absence from the Charlotte Bobcats he knows which look he prefers.

“I don’t know if anybody saw me when I got back into my uniform and walked onto the court last weekend,” Knight said. “But I couldn’t stop smiling.”

Knight, a 5-10 guard whose experience and savvy has helped the Bobcats mature through two-plus seasons as an expansion team, couldn’t hide his feelings. He had been reduced to a spectator’s role for 24 games, undergoing abdominal surgery and a lengthy rehabilitation period. And overall he had endured 48 painful days with little or no basketball.

It was all about to be too much for Knight, who had long since passed the frustration point and figured he might be in need of a personality transplant if he didn’t soon get back on the floor.

“I was getting grumpy,” he said. “I had to buy me a video game system to help pass the time, and I hadn’t played video games in years. I did that to try to curb some of my aggression. My wife (Deena) was ready for me to get back. She’s been wishing for that for a while, I think.

“Once I was able to start running again, I started wanting to be around basketball all the time. I wanted to shoot as much as I could (in practice) and rehab as much as I could. But there’s nothing like playing.”

Knight returned for a home game last Friday against Portland, an overtime loss, and played again Saturday at Houston. His game is not yet intact – both Knight and Head Coach Bernie Bickerstaff say time will take care of that – but he has come back nonetheless with a different view of the game and all it involves.

“I told the guys on the team, that was the first time they’ve seen me in a long time where I was still smiling even when I came out of the game,” Knight said. “That’s just the mentality you have. I’m going to enjoy it when I’m out there and when I’m not, I’m going to root for my guys. I’m on the other side of those years now so of course you appreciate it more. You look back at wish you had appreciated it more in those first years in the league but that’s the nature of it.

“When you’re young you feel like you’re going to do this forever. Then you get older and realize that you’re not. It’s going to be a while but it’s not going to be forever. So you start to appreciate every aspect of it. I appreciate practicing. I appreciate pulling for my teammates. I appreciate the game. I appreciate everything about it now.”

His eagerness to return couldn’t make up for the time it will take to get back on top of his game. He played 26 minutes against Portland and passed out seven assists but missed each of his seven field goal attempts and scored one point. The next night at Houston he went 17 minutes, recording four assists but missed all four of his shots plus two free throws and failed to score.

His averages at the time he went out – 12.2 points, 45.6 percent shooting, 6.8 assists – were significantly better.

“For a guy who’s been out all that time I thought it was good,” Bickerstaff said. “He got the ball to people. But at some point he’s got to play – he’s got to get back. It shouldn’t take that long if he gets minutes, but he’s got to play.

“There is a lot of disruption now (with several players coming off injuries) but we’ve got to get them back playing. In terms of being disorganized, we’re that right now. But we’ve got to do what we have to do.”

With travel demands and a heavy schedule that had the Bobcats playing, on average, one game every other day, there was no time for the full-scale practices that Knight needed as he prepared for his comeback. Injured forward Sean May faces the same situation.

“Hopefully after (this week’s) All-Star break the pain will be less, my movements will be better and not as controlled and I’ll be okay,” Knight said. “In the meantime I’m going to do whatever I can to help the team. My personal progress will come.”

Knight, a starter in the past, came off the bench against Portland, started the second half, then was a reserve again against Houston. It’s likely that in time he will be back in the starting lineup with fellow guard Raymond Felton, Bickerstaff indicated.

“That’s what we would like to do,” Bickerstaff said. “That’s what we originally wanted to do. So we’ve got to get to it. Our rotations then are much better in terms of who we can bring off the bench.

“About the eight-minute mark (of the first quarter) Emeka Okafor needs to come out, and we’ve been having to play him for 12 minutes (due to others’ injuries). But in this situation we could bring Matt (Carroll), Adam (Morrison) or one of those guys in.”

Said Knight:

“If that happens that doesn’t discredit anything that Matt or Adam or Jeff McInnis have done. We’ve been able to see the team developing recently and they’ve been a big part of that. For my part, whatever I do, I just want to help us continue to grow. Expectations are greater now and we expect more of ourselves. That’s the place you want to get to, where people expect us to win games. If we were where we were three years ago we wouldn’t be doing our jobs.

“It’s time for us to get over the hump and win some ball games. I think the players are more comfortable with one another. We’re starting to better understand what we have to do to win games. We’re starting to understand the finer points. We can only continue to get better with that…We’re finally getting to the point where we’re beginning to see the fruits of our labor. And I’m just happy to be a part of that.”

And, he could have added, just happy to be playing again.

Leonard Laye covered the NBA, ABA and college basketball for more than three decades for the Charlotte Observer and the old Charlotte News until his retirement from writing sports fulltime. He will write a regular column throughout the season for BobcatsBasketball.com for his second straight year.