Banged-up Nets will be without two starters, key rotation player vs. Hawks
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ATLANTA — The Nets will be without seven players for Wednesday’s clash in Atlanta, including a couple of starters and a third rotation player.
Offensive engine Ben Simmons will miss his seventh straight game with a nerve impingement in his lower left back, while leading scorer Cam Thomas is going to sit his sixth in a row with a left ankle sprain.
Backup point guard Dennis Smith Jr. has been dealing with a lower back sprain, and had an MRI exam on Tuesday afternoon.
Asked if the reserve guard’s back had gotten worse to prompt the scan, Jacque Vaughn implied it was the logical move following Smith’s inability to get back on the floor.
“Well, the fact that he’s not playing,” Vaughn said, leaving a pregnant pause.
“That’s kind of our steps a little bit. You let a guy get clinically diagnosed, you hope it’s not an acute injury; then you see if he can get some treatment and get back on the floor.
“Well, we had a couple days of treatment and he’s not back on the floor. So then we’ll take the next step and get an MRI.”
with a left ankle sprain
Smith’s defense will be missed Wednesday against high-scoring Hawk Trae Young, averaging 23.4 points and 11.1 assists.
None of the three injured players made the trip to Atlanta.
with a nerve impingement in his lower left back
Thomas — whose team-high 26.9 point scoring average would be top 10 in the league if he qualified — rolled his left ankle stepping on P.J. Tucker’s foot on Nov. 8.
An MRI exam the following day revealed the sprain, and Brooklyn announced that he’d be re-examined in two weeks, which would be on Thanksgiving.
The Nets will be traveling back from Atlanta and have off Thursday, returning to practice Friday.
“Yeah, I think we’ll have something for you the next day we get together. We’ll probably have something for you,” said Vaughn, who presumed Thomas’ reexamination wouldn’t require any new imaging.
“He is heading in the right direction. Unless we wanted to be extremely proficient in giving him an MRI to compare to, to my knowledge he won’t need another MRI. He’s building towards getting back on the floor.”
After Simmons missed three games with a left hip contusion, The Post first reported that he had a nerve impingement. The Nets later confirmed the nerve injury, and said a status update would be provided in a week — which would’ve been Tuesday.
“He’s just still doing what he was doing as far as off the court stuff, but not in practice or anything of that nature,” Vaughn said.
Back specialist Dr. Neel Anand told The Post that Simmons could likely need a week or two of rehab before he could resume practice, then at least another week before a return to the court.
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