Sunday at the PNY Center, the putty wasn’t in Devin Harris’ hands. Instead, there was a basketball, briefly, before he redirected it to the rim.
Encouraging though it might have been, the sight of the Nets’ injured point guard casually shooting around post-practice seems to be one that won’t translate into game action just yet. Though neither ruled out the possibility, Harris and Nets coach and GM Kiki Vandeweghe each cast doubt on the thought of Harris returning to the lineup after three games on the bench with a sprained right wrist.
“I may not be 100 percent, but he doesn’t want it to regress,” Harris said. “That’s the biggest thing, if I come back and then I have to sit out three or four games with a sore wrist, he doesn’t want that. He’d rather get me close to 100% instead of regressing.”
Harris said he can shoot 10-foot jumpers without pain, but stepping out any further than that causes him to wince. And for all Harris’ ability to get to the rim, playing with range that limited is insufficient for the NBA– it allows defenders to back up off him as far as they want, negating the speed that serves as the cornerstone around which Harris has developed his game.
In his anxiousness to get back, Harris mentioned if he could shoot for 10-20 minutes, pain-free, he’d be more than willing to play full-bore bursts until the injury forced him out. But doing so would likely prolong the recovery time, and Harris and the Nets might be best served by allowing him to fully heal.
Earlier this year, Harris suffered a preseason groin strain that was re-aggravated in the second regular-season game, costing him 10 games and depriving the Nets of their star guard during a stretch when other injuries left the team’s offense depleted. A season ago, Harris averaged 21.3 PPG on .423 shooting; in 31 games this year, those numbers have dropped to 15.3 and .378, mostly attributable to extra attention from opposing defenses and a large eFG% drop on his jumpers (to .346 from .419) – the one part of his game most affected by the 3-week-old wrist injury.
“He still doesn’t have range on his jump shot,” Vandeweghe said. “That’s the difficulty. He needs to be 100 percent. He’s not going to be totally pain free, but he needs to be enough where he doesn’t think about it anymore. That’s exactly what I told him. He needs to come back and be Devin Harris. We’re going to see how it goes, but I don’t want him to come back unless he can shoot unrestricted.”
Lee's Lead in Scoring
Harris’ backcourt mate Courtney Lee smoothly stepped back into the starting lineup after a game on the bench (oral surgery), scoring a team-high 19 points and looking as aggressive offensively as he has all season. Lee shot a perfect 6-for-6 in the opening period, and set the tone defensively when he stripped Brendan Haywood on the Wizards’ opening possession.
“We want everyone – that goes 1 through 5 – to be aggressive,” Vandeweghe said. “We want them to go for it. We want them to play within in the system, but if you have an opportunity you take the shot and you don’t look back. You take the drive. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The one thing you can’t be and I don’t want these guys to be is hesitant. You can’t think too much. You have to go for it. The best players just go for it.”
