New Jersey Nets center Brook Lopez has played in five of the team’s 38 games this season. The question now is whether he’s going to play in any more games for the Nets now that he’s been declared out for three weeks with a sprained ankle.
The Nets got a rare dose of positive injury news Monday when X-rays on center Brook Lopez’s right ankle were negative. The key piece of a potential trade with Orlando for All-Star Dwight Howard will be in a walking boot for what the team described as a precaution and will miss three weeks.
Though that puts Lopez on the shelf until after the March 15 trade deadline, team officials privately were expecting worse. Lopez was injured Sunday night during Deron Williams’ 57-point game in Charlotte and left the arena on crutches.
I have very serious doubts that this injury will affect whether Lopez will be the center piece of a Dwight Howard blockbuster trade. If Orlando ultimately decides it’s going to try to get assets from a team in exchange for a soon-to-be-departed Dwight, then they’re going to make the deal whether or not Lopez is available on March 15 or May 15. A Dwight trade is essentially a white-flag… the acceptance that he will walk away no matter what, and the need to get something as it happens.
There’s still no guarantee that Dwight gets traded. Orlando has said as much publicly and, in that link where Berger mentions his sources, privately. But should they ultimately come to the decision that he’s leaving and they’ll honor his trade request, they’ll take an injured Lopez if that’s the best long-term deal available.
And what about that decision on whether to trade Dwight? The Magic are in a tough position, which is weird to say when the justification of that statement is the fact that they’ve won seven of 10 games and now sit in the third seed in the East. It’d be one thing if the Magic were, say, the Celtics, sitting in the seventh spot and kinda, sorta trying to make a run in the playoffs. The Magic have moved three games ahead of Philadelphia (which lost again) and are playing pretty well. How do you justify to your fan base at this point that you’re trading the centerpiece of the franchise when you’re a top three seed?
Orlando might not be able to justify it. So they might have no choice, even if they know Dwight’s leaving, and even if Brook Lopez comes back tomorrow and starts dropping 25 points a night. It’s bizarre to say, but the Magic might be “stuck” with Dwight because they’ve gotten too good to let him go, and Brook Lopez’s ankle won’t make a bit of difference.
