Let the basketball fallout continue in the city of Brooklyn—Nets starting center Brook Lopez is done for the season.
Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN confirmed the regrettable story Saturday through multiple league sources.
In an ongoing drama- and injury-plagued campaign, Lopez’s fractured fifth metatarsal serves as yet another reason for pessimism in the already cynical borough of New York.
The Nets had finally begun making a respectable push toward playoff relevancy when the weekend began. They sat just 1.5 games behind first-place in the Atlantic and eighth overall in the East after starting with a dismal 5-14 mark.
Comically bad conference or not, Lopez was front and center—literally—of a Nets team pursuing legitimate functionality in the NBA. A 9-16 record was good enough.
Alas, the continually bothersome right foot of Brooklyn’s big man put the kibosh on those prospects.
Lopez sported per-game averages of 20.7 PTS, 6.0 REB and 1.8 BLK on 56.3 percent shooting. He ranked second among league centers in points, third in free throws (81.7 percent) and fourth in blocks and field-goal percentage.
The seven-footer out of Stanford was simply the Nets best asset. His scoring, rebounding, inside presence and 25.8 player efficiency rating were proof positive.
Contributing 22 points and seven boards through 44 minutes of undoubted drive-foot pain in Friday night’s 121-120 heartbreaking loss surely solidified his all-around value.
So, what does Lopez’s season-ending injury mean for Brooklyn moving forward?
ESPN New York’s Youngmisuk reports that Kevin Garnett will likely start at center, with Andray Blatche receiving increased minutes.
This presents a multitude of issues.
Garnett is near grandpa status at 37 years of age. He has already missed two games this season (three overall) due to fatigue.
And now he’ll exclusively man the center position instead of his more effective role at power forward.
That, in turn, will elevate Blatche, second-year man Mirza Teletovic and rookie Mason Plumlee. It will reduce their effectiveness off the bench and ravage the Nets overall depth chart.
Case in point: this team is 2-7 with those players seeing more game time without Lopez on the floor.
The only real hope Brooklyn has is if Deron Williams takes this franchise on his back and realizes his top-three status as a game-changing NBA point guard.
But Williams is also a “DNP” waiting to happen with 11 games missed already this season.
Let’s end with a quick glimpse at the bigger picture as it pertains to Lopez.
The sixth-year center played in all possible 246 games in his first three professional seasons.
When this 2013-2014 campaign ends, he’ll have missed 150 games over the next three years in his young NBA career.
Is that a glum look into an ominous future?
For the sake of Lopez’s playing days and sanity preservation in Brooklyn, we certainly hope not.
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