The Brooklyn Nets have a whole lot of talent sitting on the bench due to injuries. Both of the team’s marquee summer signings, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, are out — the former is working his way back from a ruptured achilles he suffered as a member of the Golden State Warriors, while the latter is dealing with a pesky shoulder injury.
The good news is that Brooklyn is slated to get another one of the team’s best perimeter options back from injury in the coming days. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Caris LeVert, who has missed 23 games due to thumb surgery, will return to the lineup on Saturday, when Brooklyn plays host to the Toronto Raptors.
LeVert has not played since Nov. 10, as the fourth-year guard out of Michigan needed a procedure done to repair ligament damage in his right thumb. He’s only appeared in nine games this season, averaging 16.8 points, five rebounds, and four steals in 31.6 minutes a night.
Still, his return to the lineup could not come at a better time for a Nets team in the midst of a slide — Brooklyn has lost four straight games and is 16-17 0n the season. That’s good enough for seventh place at the bottom of the Eastern Conference, but it’s not quite where the Nets expected to be, even with Durant missing all of this year. Getting LeVert back won’t fix all of their issues, but it’s a major step in the right direction.
