By the end of Tuesday’s practice at the PNY Center, Devin Harris’ right hand was stained neon yellow. Yet it remained in perpetual motion, vigorously rolling an amorphous lump of therapeutic putty in an attempt to strengthen his strained wrist.
Given time, Harris will likely become more ambidexterous – starved for basketball activity, he spent time after practice shooting lefty free throws, putty pushed around his palm all the while. But any off-handed improvement wasn’t evident at Monday’s Basketbowl event, where Harris said he spent the evening rolling southpaw gutter balls alongside Nets fans before finishing up with a strike.
“(My wrist) feels pretty good today,” Harris said. “I’ve been squeezing this putty for the last 48 hours, but I haven’t done any flexion stuff, so we’ll tape it up and see how it feels tomorrow.”
The Nets’ point guard missed Sunday’s game against the Jazz after aggravating the injury during the Warriors game on the front end of the weekend back-to-back. After not practicing he’s likely out for tomorrow’s game against the Clippers, and seems to be targeting Friday night’s matchup with the Wizards, with Sunday’s Sixers game seemingly more definite.
Waiting until Friday would give Harris six days to recover, and he’s admittedly anxious to return, considering his ambition to help the Nets right themselves after three straight losses by 20-plus points. But he’ll be watching in a suit as the Nets attempt to topple a Clippers team that beat them January 18th behind a brutally strong frontcourt performance by Chris Kaman and Marcus Camby. The duo combined for 39 points, 21 rebounds and six blocked shots, and were complimented by nine-assist games from Baron Davis and backup Sebastian Telfair.
“We talked a lot about having to pressure the ball more, and on our side, denying a lot more, making tougher catches (for them),” said Nets center Brook Lopez. “Then ‘helping the helper’ and blocking out and stuff like that to negate the easy points.”
Offensively, the Nets will need Lopez to continue his recent resurgence, which includes 20-plus points in five of the team’s last seven games and a last-five-game average of 22.2 points on .600 shooting, 7.8 rebounds and 1.8 blocks. Fellow sophomore Chris Douglas-Roberts has been struggling, reaching a nadir in Sunday’s one-shot, two-point performance, but rededicated himself to working through the slump by bringing in trainer Jerry Powell.
Douglas-Roberts worked with Powell throughout the summer, freely crediting the Basketball Results founder for improvements in his game. Despite the team off day yesterday, Douglas-Roberts hit the gym “as soon as we came off the plane,” staying for a few hours to shoot and work out.
“I’ve got to find a way to get back in,” Douglas-Roberts said. “I’ve got to get assertive, you know? That was the whole reason I came in once we got off the plane, that’s the whole reason I’m going back to where I was. I just feel like taking it back to the basics is really good for me. And it showed in practice today – I was more aggressive in practice; I had that attitude. So it’s going to work out for me. I’m not worried about it anymore.”
Coach and GM Kiki Vandeweghe indicated that Douglas-Roberts wasn’t the only Net to clock voluntary hours Monday, praising his team for showing good work ethic then and in today’s practice. He felt the off day was necessary following the four-game Western swing.
“I thought it was important to sort of clear your mind, come back and be positive,” Vandeweghe said. “We had a real tough road trip, ran into some teams that played some very good basketball and we didn’t help ourselves. What I was happy about was we had about seven guys come in and shoot. Guys want to get better, they want to work hard and you’ve got to keep doing that.”
Injury Updates
Courtney Lee missed practice after having a wisdom tooth removed, and Jarvis Hayes was out with a stomach virus. Both should play tomorrow.
