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| Tyshawn Taylor (above left in white) badly sprained his ankle in Saturday's Nets' loss to the Pistons. He isn't expected to return to action soon. |
Two games into the preseason (with a third coming tonight), the Brooklyn Nets are 1-1 and have looked very good at times and pretty badly at others. Still, the games in this part of the year don't count in the long run and are nothing more than glorified exhibition games between teams that are just trying to get the kinks out before the regular season begins. The only thing that's truly real about the preseason are the injuries that are obtained during it.
Brooklyn has already had its fair share of players miss its first two preseason games.
Most notably, starting point guard Deron Williams has missed both preseason contests so far due to a nagging ankle issue. Then, backup point guard Tyshawn Taylor, whom the Nets' drafted last year out of Kansas, sprained his ankle vs the Pistons two days ago, sidelining him for an uncertain amount of time. Training camp invite Jorge Gutierrez also injured his ankle–this time in the Nets' first preseason game, versus the Wizards–and summer pickup Jason Terry hasn't even played a game in a Nets uniform yet due to offseason knee surgery.
The list goes on and on.
The season hasn't even officially begun, and the Nets are already ailing in terms of key players lost due to injury. Sure, no one's ailment or injury is serious enough to warrant missing the start of the season yet. However, if they keep piling up, the bumps and bruises may turn into more pressing and debilitating concerns. Already a relatively old team, the Nets need nothing less than a few crushing injury to crucial players to crimp the franchise's title hopes.
Andrei Kirilenko's minor back spasms and Deron's nagging ankle issue aren't conditions to worry about at this moment, but they should remain in the minds of Nets fans going forward. Minor injury blips like those are just another part of the long NBA season as every team in the league experiences them throughout the preseason, regular season, and–hopefully–the postseason as well.
The Nets in Brooklyn (and going back to their history in New Jersey too) know bad injuries as much as the next team over. Recent ones that come to mind are the broken foot and later ankle problem that wiped out all but five games of Brook Lopez' 2011-12 season and the chronic ankle issues that have plagued Deron Williams since he was traded to the Nets from the Jazz in 2011.
It's vital that the small injuries that a handful of Nets are dealing with now don't progress into colossal season-ending problems that affect the team's success later on this year. If they don't, then the hopes that Brooklyn can contend for an Eastern Conference championship shall live. But if they do, then Jason Kidd's team is in a world of trouble.
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