PHOENIX — The Nets will be without their leading scorer Wednesday in Phoenix against old friend Kevin Durant.
Cam Thomas has joined their long list of sidelined players, ruled out with a sore left hamstring.
Coach Jordi Fernandez pulled Thomas midway through the third quarter Monday to “protect him from himself.”
The young guard, who scored 23 points in the win over Golden State and is averaging a team-high 24.7 points, had also been dealing with a sore back and was under the weather Friday in Philadelphia. He’ll get a needed break.
Noah Clowney will also be out with a left ankle sprain. The Nets have not given an update on the severity or the results of the young big man’s MRI exam.
Starters Nic Claxton (lower back soreness), Dorian Finney-Smith (left ankle sprain) and Cam Johnson (right ankle sprain) are all questionable against the Suns.
Cam Johnson sprained his ankle in the first quarter Monday, hobbled through the last seven minutes of the second quarter and did not return after halftime.
Day’Ron Sharpe (left hamstring strain) and Bojan Bogdanović (left foot injury recovery) and two-way Jaylen Martin are out.
Ben Simmons is expected to play.
He had been held out of Monday’s win at Golden State because he still wasn’t cleared to play both ends of back-to-backs.
With the aforementioned big men all out, wing Ziaire Williams was pressed into starting as a small-ball five as Brooklyn played five-out at Golden State.
He finished with his second career double-double (19 points, 10 boards, four assists) and a game-high plus-12 in 37:17.
“Yeah, amazing performance on both ends,” Fernandez said. “He helped us space the floor, because when you don’t play with a true center, then it can get sometimes a little funky, right? Like, who’s the screener? Who’s the roller? How do we space the floor? And he was great.
“And then defensively, challenging their size, going with his physicality, pushing, rebounding, like you said, close to a double-double. In my opinion — I know he had an amazing performance, I believe it was against Memphis — but I think this one was his best performance of the year.”
Since dropping a crushing back-to-back with late heartbreakers against Boston (Nov. 8) and Cleveland (Nov. 9), the Nets have been night and day different in their fourth-quarter performance from the first ten games to their past eight.
Brooklyn’s Net Rating jumped from 20th (minus 4.5) to sixth (13.8), their scoring from 28th to eighth and their 3-point percentage from 26th (.293) to first (.433).
Durant was expected to return from injury for the Suns on Tuesday night against the Lakers.
Phoenix is 8-1 with the former Nets star in the lineup.
