The Nets feared the worst Thursday when David Nwaba went down with a serious Achilles injury. Those fears were realized Friday, when their top perimeter defender underwent season-ending surgery.
The worst-possible scenario was confirmed: Nwaba had ruptured his right Achilles tendon. He had surgery performed Friday by Dr. Martin O’Malley at Hospital for Special Surgery. The Nets’ team orthopedist is the same one who repaired Kevin Durant’s torn Achilles last spring.
After the initial emotional gut-punch of losing Nwaba on Thursday, the Nets now must answer the question: “What’s next?”
“My heart aches to see David Nwaba go down. He is tenacious with such competitive spirit. Hope he will have a smooth recovery,” owner Joe Tsai tweeted.
“When this happens, it’s kind of a shock,” coach Kenny Atkinson admitted. “We’ll get it together. We’ve got a great group of guys there in the locker room; we’ll get it together. … We’ll obviously have to have some support from our bench. Our young guys, they’ll have to step it up and pull a little of the slack.
“We’ve been here before. And we’re going to have to reconfigure the rotation and we’ll figure it out. We have Rodions [Kurucs]. We have [Dzanan] Musa. We have a lot of good players over there, so we’ll do our best to make up for David’s absence.”
But with Kyrie Irving, Caris LeVert, Nic Claxton and now Nwaba all out, when do the Nets reach an event horizon?
“Our wings are going to have to step up. Musa might get another look; we’ll see. Wilson [Chandler] has been playing pretty good for us, so I’m assuming more minutes for him,” Garrett Temple said. “But all of this is up to coach. It’s tough to think about who’s going to play right now.”
Nwaba was emerging as a “3-and-D” find. His defensive rating (94.7) is fourth-best in the NBA among players who’ve appeared in at least half their team’s games.
“That defense is what I take pride in and I’ll continue to showcase that,” Nwaba had told The Post hours before his injury. “We’re clicking defensively, we’re feeding off each other. … That’s the big thing, taking pride in our defense.”
That raises the question of how the Nets replace a rising young player who rewrote their defensive DNA.
In the short term, they can’t. His minutes could go to Musa and Kurucs, as well as Chandler as he works himself into shape after a 25-game PED suspension.
Musa had gone 16 straight games logging at least 11:59 until this past week, when he received just eight minutes over his past four games.
As for Kurucs, he played in all of the Nets’ first seven games, totaling 83 minutes while firmly in the rotation. But he has appeared in just six of the 21 since, scattering 40 minutes.
Both Musa and Kurucs logged just over a minute Thursday in San Antonio. They will get far more in the immediate future — at least until an NBA-certified physician determines Nwaba is out for the season.
The Nets have until Jan. 15 to apply for a Disabled Player Exception, and are believed to have done so. That would enable them to sign a player on a one-year deal, trade for one in the final year of his contract, or put in a waiver claim on a player in the last year of his deal. Bringing back Iman Shumpert seems a distinct possibility.
With this many players hurt, ex-Nets assistant general manager Bobby Marks tweeted they could file for a hardship waiver after Dec. 28 if the NBA deems Irving and LeVert are out for another two weeks. (It lets a team add a 16th player if at least four are out for over two weeks).
Whatever the result, it could be a somber holiday season.
“It’s next man up,” Spencer Dinwiddie said. “Odds are we’ll probably get Shump back, which will be cool. But you never want it to happen in this way, especially with Dave catching a rhythm and playing so well and being so dynamic, shooting the 3 well. It’s not cool. It’s not fun.”
