In a lightly contested national television loss in Los Angeles to the Clippers on Thursday night, the Nets got some scary news right after halftime as it was announced that forward Mirza Teletovic was taken to a local hospital for shortness of breath. He missed the rest of the game.
Then, on Friday, news broke that Mirza’s shortness of breath was caused by blood clots in his lungs, a serious problem that is causing him to miss the rest of the season. For the time-being, he will be held in a LA hospital and given blood thinners because flying poses a lot of danger for such a condition.
First off, basketball aside, this is a possible life-threatening issue that Mirza is dealing with and Lionel Hollins is crediting Nets’ all-world trainer Tim Walsh and team doctor Dr. Michael Farber with potentially saving Teletovic’s life. They both encouraged additional testing on Mirza that led to the discovery of the blood clots, owing to the importance of caution for athletes (NFL, you should be watching).
According to all information out there right now, Mirza narrowly avoided something really, really bad and that’s vastly more important than anything basketball-related to come from the news. However, he was a key part of Brooklyn’s rotation and now has to be replaced for the second half of the season.
Undoubtedly, rookie Cory Jefferson is going to get more minutes with Mirza out and how he does in those minutes, as a reserve option at the 3 or 4, will determine how Hollins alters his rotation and if an additional player will be picked up. Fellow rookie Markel Brown may also see a minutes uptick as well.
But, in all likelihood, the Nets’ pair of rookies probably won’t be able to provide enough offense to completely make up for Mirza’s absence. The last thing Brooklyn can afford is a significant scoring drop which means an outside pickup–either via trade, free agency or even the D-League–may be necessary.
Surprisingly, the best option for the Nets could be a player that was a key contributor for them the past two seasons: Andray Blatche.
Signed in September of 2012, Blatche was a double-digit scorer for Brooklyn in each of his years with the Nets but wasn’t re-signed this offseason and instead headed to the Xinjiang Flying Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association on a one-year deal. He’s teammates with former NBAers Sebastian Telfair, Jordan Crawford and James Singleton and has been tearing the league up, averaging 30.6 points and 15.1 rebounds per contest on .620/.369/.765 shooting.
Frankly, I think it’s time to bring Blatche back. He has expressed interest in returning to the Nets often on his Twitter account (note the background) and is a perfect fit for a Nets team he was a big part of for two seasons. I understand wanting to give the rookies a chance to shine but there’s no reason for Blatche to not make his return to a Brooklyn team that needs his exact skill set. Make it happen, Billy King.
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