Ben Simmons will miss his sixth game this season on Wednesday due to a sore left knee. Nets point guard Kyrie Irving said Simmons’ absences impact the club in many ways, Brian Lewis of the New York Post writes.
“When he’s not out there we don’t have our point forward, our point guard, being able to initiate easy opportunities, push the ball in transition; so we’ll definitely miss him in the lineup,” Irving said. “Hopefully he comes back [soon], but if he’s dealing with it we just want him to get as healthy as possible and we’ll figure it out.”
We have more from the Eastern Conference:
- In Joe Mazzulla, Celtics guard Marcus Smart feels he has a head coach that fully trusts him, he told Steve Bulpett of Heavy.com. “I think once Coach put his trust in me, we’ve seen how it’s allowed me to blossom and this team to blossom,” Smart said. “So just having a coach that can believe in you and allow you to run the team like he needs you to, that means everything. And then on top of that him being a point guard, that’s just an extra bonus, because he understands the pressure that I have to go through as the point guard in making everybody else happy and sacrificing your own for the team.”
- The Heat released their injury report for Wednesday’s game and there’s no less than a dozen names on the list heading into their showdown with the Celtics, Anthony Chiang of the Miami Herald tweets. Jimmy Butler, Victor Oladipo and Omer Yurtseven are listed as out, while Nikola Jovic, Dewayne Dedmon, Gabe Vincent, Caleb Martin, Tyler Herro, Haywood Highsmith and Duncan Robinson received the questionable tag. Two other players are probable.
- The most realistic path to improvement for the Knicks is still the trade route, Ian Begley of SNY TV opines. They’ll continue to seek out top talent and have a surplus of draft picks and some young players to offer teams. Stuck in mediocrity, the only question is whether they’ll make a big move before the trade deadline or wait until the offseason.
I still think not meeting Ainge’s asking price was the correct move. The draft assets will retain their value, or become more valuable. Need to trade Randle for more picks by the deadline, so you can have Toppin start for a year to either showcase and trade him, or resign him. If RJ Barrett doesn’t improve as a shooter, they might need to try to move him next offseason, too. Brunson is the only real keeper at the moment, so they should be open to any and everything, including replacing Thibodeaux with a coach that will emphasize developing the younger players.
Draft assets lose value as time elapsed, not gain. Mitch is awful, RJ is awful, Grimes isn’t anything special. The Knicks absolutely bamboozled.themselves by negotiating in the weird way they did. However, it’s the Knicks, so I expected them to fumble this and they did.
Which Coach was Smart referring to? Mazzula or Udoka? Udoka is the one thst gave him the reigns last season after early season hiccups. Mazzulla hit the repeat button, and its going better than expected. I haven’t seen smart playing a different position?
Smart looks in the mirror and sees Oscar Robertson.
Begley likes to demonstrate his ignorance of NBA history at every opportunity. Arms length trades for established stars have never (at least in the salary cap/FA era) resulted in improvement beyond the incremental and/or temporary levels. For a team on the cusp of contention, that might work as a goal. Not for the NYK. The best path is rarely one that’s never worked in over 40 years despite countless tries. I’d rather tank (which hasn’t produced a champion yet, but has a shorter history and come closer).
I finally have a witness. That’s exactly right.