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| KG hasn't played since the Nets' February 27th win over the Nuggets |
When the Nets traded for Kevin Garnett (along with Paul Pierce and Jason Terry) back in June, they knew they were getting older players who should still be serviceable but are probably a bit past their respective primes. They also knew that older players tend to get injuries more, so planned rest days and unplanned injury absences were to be expected.
Well, Terry is in Sacramento now and Pierce started off slow but has seemed to regain his rhythm now and has seen his February and March field goal shooting percentages stick right around the 50% mark, which is amazing for a perimeter-focused played like himself. Garnett, on the other hand, is much harder to specifically define.
He has missed Brooklyn's last eight games with back spasms, that, similarly to those that caused Andrei Kirilenko to miss a major chunk of the early season, have kept Garnett out of the lineup for an extended period. It was thought he would return in last Monday's win over the Toronto Raptors, but a pregame re-aggravation forced him to sit out yet again. To be fair, though, the Nets are 6-2 in KG's absence and look to improve to 7-2 tomorrow night in Brooklyn against Phoenix in another game that the 37-year-old is expected to miss.
As with any back spasms injury, Garnett's return timetable right now is totally up in the air, which is bad for him and the Nets, obviously, but it's not disastrous. This team has 18 games left in the regular season which should be enough time for KG to sit out some more and then hopefully return so he can get back into the flow of Jason Kidd's offensive and defensive schemes.
The problem is that we don't just when he'll be able to get back on the floor. When AK suffered from back spasms in the preseason that caused him to miss the season opener, then 25 more games after playing in the next four, his timetable was totally unpredictable and he ended up missing a significant portion of games. A 25-game absence would be really bad for Garnett, whom the Nets would need badly for the playoffs in around a month.
What does this tell us? For starters, it says that KG's originally-inconspicuous back problem has a very good chance of costing him much more time that was thought when he was first hurt. It also elicits that when he does come back, it might take him a few games to shake off the rust of sitting for so long. AK actually played well after coming back to the lineup, but he's 33, a far cry–in basketball years–from Garnett being in the tail end of the 30s. An older Garnett probably needs a good week or so to get his shot and stamina back after an extended injury delay.
For this second, the situation regarding Kevin's back spasms isn't dire, at least just yet. Obviously, it's something to expect the worst with and prepare for in case he isn't able to effectively return in mid-April for the postseason. This means Jason Kidd has to come up some contingency plans to try and replace his future Hall-of-Famer if need be, and if history with back spasms injuries holds true, those plans have to be good.
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