Joe Harris didn’t practice on Tuesday and he won’t be in the lineup on Wednesday when the Brooklyn Nets face the Milwaukee Bucks in their penultimate preseason game of the year. For that matter, sharpshooter Seth Curry won’t play either.
It was still up in the air if Curry would be ready for the season opener on Oct. 19 when the New Orleans Pelicans come to town. The Nets dealt with plenty of injury woe during the course of last season and came into training camp ready to put the chaos of last year behind them.
They have done that so far, but the injury issues are not ones that Nets coach Steve Nash was hoping to deal with so soon.
“Joe did some light shooting and still monitoring the soreness. We’ll see how he responds tomorrow,” Nash said following practice at HSS Training Center in Sunset Park. It was later clarified that Harris was dealing with foot soreness.
Curry, who the Nets had hoped would get into one of the last preseason games before the opener, has been ruled out to play for the remainder of the week. When Nash asked if he was on pace to be ready for the regular season, the coach answered “possibly.”
“It’d be too much for me to commit to that right now, but it’s not out of the question,” Nash added.
Additionally, Nash revealed that Edmund Sumner had been dealing with a hip strain.
All three had been coming back with some sort of issue from last season. Harris missed nearly the entire year due to an ankle injury that would require two procedures and Curry had arthroscopic surgery on his left ankle during the offseason and had told reporters at media day that he was 85-90% and he has still not been cleared for five-on-five work.
Sumner had been rehabbing from an Achillies issue, but had been cleared for five-on-five work prior to the start of camp.
Despite the time missed by Curry and Harris, Nash didn’t seem too outwardly alarmed.
“Seth is in/around. Joe, we put the breaks on a little bit here but he’s done a great job,” Nash said about where they are in their return process. “(He) had a good summer, and put himself in a position, so hopefully this resolves quickly too.”
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But if the issues linger longer, it could impact the consistency to the lineup that the Nets had wanted so bad last season and hoped to have this year. Harris appeared in the starting lineup for Brooklyn’s first preseason game at Barclays Center last week and it was expected that the starting five from that group would be the same during the regular season.
When the subject was broached, Nash admitted it would be great if they could get that this season.
“Last year obviously we didn’t have the luxury, but any kind of consistency, time together to build in a certain direction would be fantastic for this group.”
