Ben Simmons injury update, Brooklyn Nets, return, details

To hear Ben Simmons tell it, there isn’t much concern over his status.

“I feel great,” Simmons said following practice.

Simple and easy. As if.

Heading into the upcoming game in Toronto, Simmons has been inactive for five of the Nets’ past seven games, including four in a row from November 30 to December 7 when he was dealing with knee soreness and a calf strain.

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The Nets were always going to bring Simmons along slowly this season, sitting him on the second end of back-to-backs, as a result of the time he spent sitting out last season — first when he was holding out in Philadelphia then with a back injury upon being traded to Brooklyn.

At least publicly, the Nets haven’t put a hard cap on Simmons’ minutes, but they’re paying close attention to how much he plays, trying to massage him into being healthy when the games count the most.

“I think we’ve continued to build their minutes up but not to the point where it’s too many,” coach Jacque Vaughn said — referring to both Simmons and TJ Warren, who recently returned from an injury of his own. “And so we want both those guys to be healthy at the end of the year.

“So we got to be smart about how we use those guys going forward, whether that’s back-to-backs how we use those minutes, whether that’s how many minutes they play in a single game. I think we have enough depth to use their minutes judiciously and to be able to play at a pace that we want to and still play hard.”

Simmons, of course, wants to play as much as possible. That creates a bit of push and pull, although the player acknowledges that he is a biased party, and perhaps not the best person to make the final call.

“I’m not a doctor, bro,” Simmons said. “I don’t make that decision. I can only tell them how I feel, but at the same time, I’m gonna trust their decision and what they think is best for me.”

“You have this honest conversation about what’s too much,” Vaughn said. “I think at the beginning, we wanted to continue to push Ben to play as many games as possible and for him to grow up with the group on the floor. I think we learned maybe we pushed a little bit too much, and for a guy that hadn’t played in a long time. And so I think sometimes you kind of learn by going through the situation and [get] smarter on the other side, hopefully.”

Partially as a result of having played just 19 games this season, Simmons is still feeling his way into where he fits with the Nets. The talent that made him a no-brainer No. 1-overall pick is still there, but so much of the narrative around Simmons has centered on his shortcomings, and for obvious reasons. Vaughn wants to find a way to make it work.

“He’s just so unique,” Vaughn said.

“Who you’re going to have out there on the floor with him, what the spacing is going to look like, what he’s going to look like with the basketball in his hands, where he’s going to be without the basketball in his hands. So we’re always trying to put him in a position to succeed. And we’re still messing around with that, where he’s at.”

They might be messing around a little longer, but Vaughn did project some optimism that his workload might not be so limited down the line — maybe even when the Nets next play a back-to-back on January 19.

“I think we want all of our guys playing in all the games,” Vaughn said. “So yes, we want to work towards all of our guys being in a position to play back-to-backs.”

This article first appeared on The New York Postand was reproduced with permission.