The Nets are going to have to wait a little longer for “scary hours”.
Kyrie Irving sat out Monday night’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day tilt, a 125-123 win over the Milwaukee Bucks, due to health and safety protocols. It marked the seventh consecutive game the All-Star point guard had missed, stretching back to the Jan. 5 victory over the Utah Jazz.
The Nets expect Irving to fly with them to Cleveland and hope he can face the Cavaliers either Wednesday or Friday at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
“I think we just want him to ramp up accordingly to protect him from unnecessary injuries. I think he got some work [Sunday], possibly [Monday],” Nets coach Steve Nash said. “He’ll get some work [Tuesday] and then we’ll go to Cleveland, and hopefully he’ll be available on Wednesday night.”
A lot has happened since Irving last played, not the least of which is the Nets trading for superstar James Harden to form a Big Three, and Irving himself becoming a lightning rod after going maskless at a party while on personal leave.
When Nash was asked if Irving had to clear things up with the Nets regarding his extended midseason leave and questions about his commitment, he stayed mum.
“You know, I’m going to keep all the discussions we have in-house,” Nash said. “We continue to communicate and we welcome him back [Tuesday] and look forward to seeing him and getting him back integrated with the team.”
After Irving went on leave for what the Nets only called “personal reasons,” he continued to make news. He was spotted at a birthday party at a public venue, drawing a league-mandated contact tracing quarantine. Then he went on a Zoom call supporting the campaign of Manhattan district attorney candidate Tahanie Aboushi a half-hour before the Nets faced Denver.
Irving also bought a house for the family of George Floyd, who was killed last May by Minneapolis police officers.
Though Irving cleared his five-day quarantine before Saturday’s win over Orlando, he’d spent so much time away from actual live NBA game action that the Nets wanted to give him opportunities to work out to ramp back up.
Irving is believed to have worked out Sunday with the reserves — Brooklyn’s so-called Stay Ready group — and will continue to ramp up his conditioning. With the NBA schedule crammed into just five months, teams are afforded next to no actual practice time; but the Nets will concoct workouts for Irving in hopes of getting him ready to return Wednesday in Cleveland.
“We’ll set him up so he can play a little bit,” Nash said. “We won’t practice per se, because we’ve got to save legs playing the amount of games we’re playing. We’ll watch film and walk through and maybe script some stuff. But we’ll set up with some of the Stay Ready group for him to play.
“What you want to see is just him to get some time like you said in his legs so he’s more able to adapt back to playing. If you haven’t played there’s no way you can simulate it, so I think it’s important that he gets a little extra work and is as prepared as possible to play Wednesday.”
After Harden dropped the first 30-point triple-double team debut in NBA history on Saturday, the newly acquired star said when Irving gets back and joins he and Kevin Durant it’ll be “scary hours.” That’ll have to wait at least another 48 hours, ironically for a rare visit by Irving back to Cleveland.
Irving’s 2016 NBA Finals Game 7 winner for the Cavaliers is arguably the most iconic shot of the past decade. But after asking out of Cleveland — getting dealt to Boston in the summer of 2017 — the star point guard has only returned to play there a single time: on opening night of the 2017-18 campaign.
Monday night’s game still featured what oddsmakers view as a preview of the likeliest Eastern Conference finals, facing the Bucks and MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo.
The Nets ended up shipping Jarrett Allen out in the four-team megadeal for Harden, but that clearly wasn’t their preference. They tried other means to acquire the fourth first-round pick needed to satisfy Houston, and apparently dangled Landry Shamet to multiple teams according to ESPN.
