After nearly three months on the sidelines, Ben Simmons finally returns to the court Monday night for the Nets.
Exactly what Brooklyn gets from him – either against the Jazz, or the rest of the season – remains to be seen.
“He definitely helps us. It’s good to see him back with the group,” starting center Nic Claxton said of Simmons. “Of course he brings this extremely high basketball IQ, being able to defend multiple positions on the defensive side of the ball, rebounding. So we are definitely happy to have him back.
“He’s been diligent, he’s been locked in on his rehab. Of course, nobody wants to go through what he’s going through with his back injury and everything but, you know, he’s happy to be back. I’m just happy to see how everything will look with him back with the group.”
The high-priced and oft-injured Simmons has been limited to just six games this season due to a nerve impingement in his left lower back.
He’s logged just 39 appearances since Brooklyn acquired him at the 2021-22 trade deadline at the cost of former MVP James Harden.
But after missing the last 38 straight games, Simmons practiced with G League Long Island over the weekend and was upgraded from probable to available on the Nets’ latest injury report, meaning he should suit up for the first time since Nov. 6.
“I’m excited. He’s a big piece of what we want to do,” Cam Johnson said of Simmons. “I only got to play the first game of the season with him, and even then I was kind of fresh back (from my own hamstring injury), so it wasn’t really necessarily full-go. So I’m really excited to get back on board and re-establish that chemistry and the way we want to play.”
Johnson is right in that the Nets – struggling at 18-27 and sitting outside even Eastern Conference play-in – have seen far too little of a healthy rotation.
Their presumptive top seven of he, Simmons, Claxton, Mikal Bridges, Cam Thomas, Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith have been available just once all season, opening night. They won’t be together again against Utah, with Finney-Smith injured.
Brooklyn’s trio of Simmons, Bridges and Claxton have logged just 4:18 with Dinwiddie and Finney-Smith, and 4:32 with Dinwiddie and Johnson. That trio has played just a minute each with Thomas and Finney-Smith and Thomas and Johnson.
In essence, they have no idea what these lineups are going to actually look like.
They can simply bank on being better with Simmons than without him, a switchable 6-foot-10 defender who can guard multiple positions and was averaging 10.8 rebounds when he went down.
“That’s a huge advantage,” Johnson said. “He can really guard, and he can also rebound on top of that. So, like I said, everything that we want to do as a team, he fits that mold.”
Claxton is regarded as one of it not the best switching centers in the NBA. Following a disastrous attempt to go to drop coverage, Brooklyn has played much better defensively the past month after returning to a switching scheme. Even if his minutes are limited, Simmons should only help that.
“I think it just adds more versatility to the group in general, just having another guy who’s used to switching, somebody that I’m used to playing with and I feel like we did some really good things on defensive side of the ball last year, so just being able to continue to add to that,” said Claxton.
Simmons is earning $37.9 million this season and $40.3 million next season.
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