INDIANAPOLIS — The cat is finally out of the bag: Kyrie Irving is going to play.
Brooklyn has finally revealed its worst-kept secret: Irving will make his season debut against the Pacers on Wednesday, though head coach Steve Nash remained coy about whether or not his All-Star guard will start in his first game of the season.
“He can definitely start,” Nash said at morning shootaround. Nash has a history of bringing star players off the bench in their first game back after a long absence. “We could put him on the bench. We could put him on the starting lineup. I think he’s open to either and it’s just a matter of us thinking short-term, middle-term and long-term and what suits our group.”
Regardless of how the Nets plan to use their superstar scorer, the timing couldn’t be better. The Nets are hoping to snap a three-game losing streak against the Pacers, and Irving’s sheer presence, along with his production, is going to give the team a boost.
But how long until Irving gets back to being the Irving the basketball world has known for the past 10 years? His teammates have all said he looks like his old self in practice, a sentiment LaMarcus Aldridge echoed at shootaround on Wednesday.
“He’s Kai,” Aldridge said. “He’s a professional, and he’s talented, so he looks good.”
Yet the facts still remain: Irving has not played an NBA game since spraining his ankle in the second round of the playoffs last year. By the time his ankle fully healed, New York City mandated professional indoor athletes be vaccinated against COVID-19. The Nets ruled shortly after training camp that the unvaccinated Irving could not practice at home or play road games given his status as unavailable at home.
That rendered Irving mostly helpless, as long as he refused to get a coronavirus vaccine. Without pros to play against, he backpacked across north New Jersey — a high school gym here, a middle school basketball court there, a college gym, anywhere he could go to get some run, even if it was well below his level of play. Irving’s run was so scarce, he said he had to play pickup games with the intent of honing as many different areas of his game each time he played.
“This was my first time being with other pros on one floor again, playing pickup or just working out,” Irving said after rejoining the team a week ago. “It was tough, and I was resilient, but it’s nothing like being in this environment and playing with the best of the best. This is where I belong, this is where I’ve worked my entire life to be, so it was like riding a bike, or being at the first day of school again, just going back out there and I missed it.”
So while Irving might look like himself in practice, he certainly won’t feel like himself in an NBA game — at least not from a conditioning standpoint. Nash said there is not exactly a minutes restriction on Irving, but he doesn’t believe he can handle a full superstar’s load just yet.
“I don’t think it’s where he can play 38 (minutes), but I think he can play a big chunk of the game,” he said. “He’s had three or four full-court days with five-on-five. I think he’s capable of playing extended minutes but not necessarily his accustomed high 30s.”
Again, the Nets will take whatever they can get. After all, it’s why they backtracked on their initial stance that Irving’s presence as a part-time player would wreck the team’s continuity: What exactly is continuity when COVID-19 wrecks the NBA, 10 players at a time?
Nash said the Nets have changed their game plan and offensive schematics “a little bit” since Irving has been out, but also noted that while Irving has yet to play, he has been with the team since clearing the health and safety protocols last Wednesday.
“Kyrie knows what he’s doing,” Nash said. “He also can adapt to situations. So we haven’t had a ton of time to really give him the tutorials, but that’s something we are happy to do on the fly as well and let him, more importantly, feel a sense of cohesion with his teammates, get comfortable playing the game before we overload him with a ton of thoughts, and I think he’ll be fine.”
But it’s more than just continuity, more than just additional bodies for a loaded Nets team that is competing for a championship. The Nets have lost three straight games, each loss uglier and more embarrassing than the last.
The ugly truth is the Nets need Irving. Their championship hopes hinge on his capabilities and availability, and possibly even on swaying him to get vaccinated against COVID-19 so he can play home games, particularly in the playoffs.
The Nets are a different team with Irving. They are a team, they believe, that makes the clock strike “scary.” A team with a vastly improved defense that needs their star scorer to reach their full potential.
“I’m sure there will be a little bit of nerves, jumping in in the middle of a season like this, but really he just looks excited and happy to be back and enthusiastic,” Nash said. “Kyrie obviously gives us the chance to be better offensively. ... However, this year we have won with our defense. That is clear. So it’s gotta be important that we can’t lose sight of that, and hopefully we’re improved offensively with Kyrie, (but) we can’t let go of where we’ve put ourselves defensively.”
