Joe Harris may have not been on the court for most of last season, but his diagnosis of what led to the Nets’ demise last year concurred with what Kevin Durant had said a few days prior.
“I think it was just a little bit more of looking down the road and feeling the loss from the prior year in the playoffs and wanting to get back to that point in the playoffs and maybe looking past some of the games that we had in the early season. Instead of just being as attentive and focus on the present,” Harris said on Wednesday. “So I think it’s something that we’re just trying to be really cognizant of where everybody’s focused on — we’re having a good second day of training camp, and then tomorrow, we’ll have another good day, and we’ll just keep having these building blocks that we’ll build off of, but we’re not trying to look too far ahead. And this can be the same thing.
“Preseason games, you’re not gonna take these preseason games for granted, regardless of how much time guys are playing, wherever we’re at. You know, I think the whole focus is just alright, how do we get better today and then just kind of building off of that.”
Harris appeared in just 14 games for the Nets last season before he suffered what ended up being a season-ending injury that required him to have ankle surgery in March. Losing Harris was one of the many things that had gone wrong for Brooklyn during the course of the year that saw them eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.
#Nets Joe Harris talking about being back after the injury issues last season. pic.twitter.com/ohfyKEUWsD
— Christian Arnold (@C_Arnold01) September 28, 2022
The Nets sharpshooter has been fully cleared for camp and the upcoming season and having him back on the court is going to be a big boost for Brooklyn on both ends of the floor.
While there isn’t expected to be any lingering impact from the offseason surgery and Harris said that his ankle. He did say that it’s other areas of his body have flared up, but called it part of the rehab.
He also added that the approach to his rehab had changed a bit as well.
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“Oh yeah it takes me a lot longer to get ready to go right now, but I think that would probably be the same ankle injury or not,” Harris said. “There’s a lot of miles on my body just the way that I play the game too. It’s a little bit different now than when I first was here in Brooklyn.”
The 2022-23 season will be Harris’ seventh in the NBA.
