Mikel Brown Jr. is on track to make his preseason debut for the Nets after missing time with an ankle injury, and that return is coming at a good moment for a Brooklyn roster still sorting out its rotation.
Coach Jordi Fernandez said Monday that Brown’s status is trending in the right direction, though the team still wants to see how the next step unfolds before locking anything in. “I believe [he'll play during the preseason]. That's the plan, but we've got to see what the next step is,” Fernandez said after practice.
Brown rolled his ankle during the week before Nets camp opened, and about two weeks later he has moved into contact work with coaches. At Sunday’s Nets Fan Fest, he said the recovery has reached the point where he’s feeling close to full speed again.
“I’m getting back on the court, and I’m moving way better. I’m starting to get to full speed now, starting to get a little bit of contact in as of right now in my workouts and stuff like that,” Brown told the New York Post's Brian Lewis at Sunday's Nets Fan Fest. “But as of now, I’m just leaning on my performance staff to put me in the best situation possible.”
Brooklyn’s first-rounder is drawing plenty of attention for obvious reasons: Brown is the highest draft pick of the Nets’ Brooklyn era. His debut has been one of the most anticipated storylines around camp, especially after he flashed in Summer League despite a disrupted college season at Louisville, where he missed the second half of his freshman year because of a back injury.
In four Summer League games, the rookie point guard put up 15.0 points, 4.0 assists and 1.3 steals in 21.7 minutes per game, giving the Nets a quick look at his feel for the game and his ability to make plays.
Even while he’s been stuck on the sidelines during training camp, Brown has been staying plugged in mentally. He said he’s been digging into film and absorbing the install so the transition back onto the floor feels smoother.
“I'm just taking a deeper dive into film, really just going back and watching the practices, watching the install, really just trying to make it second nature to me so when I come out on the court, when I get back to playing, I'm already knowing what I need to do,” Brown said. “So really just throwing myself deeper into that film and asking more questions.
But shoot, on the level of quarterback, I don't know. They get new installs every single week.
So that's a different type of process, but to be compared to that is great.”
Brown’s return would arrive as preseason competition begins to sort out Brooklyn’s depth chart. The projected starting group around him is widely viewed as Brown, Egor Demin, Michael Porter Jr., Julius Randle and Day'Ron Sharpe, but the second unit is much less settled.
Nolan Traore, Ben Saraf, Keon Ellis, Terance Mann and Drake Powell are among the players battling for backcourt minutes off the bench, while Noah Clowney, Danny Wolf, Josh Minott and Joshua Jefferson are in the mix for forward minutes.
Fernandez said the message to the group is simple as the Nets move into games: compete for everything.
“Just to be ready to compete,” the coach said of his message to players entering preseason games. “After we put all of this work in and all the energy that we used in the gym, we got better as a group, and now we're ready to play against somebody else.
So the competition continues now. You've been competing against your teammates in practice here, and now you get to play against somebody else, but you're still competing for minutes, for rotation minutes, starting minutes, all that stuff.
So it's a great part of the process and starts tomorrow.”
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Michael Porter Jr. led the way with 16 points, while Julius Randle added 13 as Brooklyns offensive flow looked sharper than it has at other points in the exhibition slate. It is still preseason, of course, but the combination of perimeter shooting and control for long stretches gave the Nets something tangible to point to as they continue sorting out how this rotation fits together. [Read more 🡒]