Billy King made it official this evening, announcing before tonight's Nets game against the Washington Wizards at Prudential Center that Brook Lopez will not play again this season.
"Brook will not play the rest of this year,'' King said of Lopez, who finishes the season with five games played, and 19.2 points per game. "He's healing nicely, but with 10 games to go, and him being a free agent and looking at the future, we decided to shut him down for the rest of the year.''
King said he made the decision in conjunction with Lopez' agent, Arn Tellem, when he visited with Tellem in Los Angeles, while the Nets were there earlier this week to play the Lakers.
"I didn't want to make the decision for Brook, because (of) him being a (restricted) free agent,'' King said. "But everybody thought it was best, you have a young center, to not risk anything the rest of this year.''
"We're not really, on the cusp of making the playoffs,'' King said. "It's looking on what's the best for players and their interests.''
He said if the Nets were in the hunt for a playoff spot, "we might look at it a little differently.''
Lopez suffered a broken fifth metatarsal bone in his right foot in the second and final preseason game, against the Knicks, Dec. 21. He underwent surgery two days later and ended up missing the first 32 games of the season before returning Feb. 19 against Milwaukee. He sat out the next night's game, against the Knicks, and then played his second game Feb. 22, against the Orlando Magic in the Nets' final game before the All-Star break. It would have been important for Lopez to play that game, since at the time, the Nets were attempting to trade him to the Magic for Dwight Howard.
Lopez then played three more games after the All-Star break, but on March 4 in Charlotte, he twisted his right ankle early in the third quarter and left the game. The team first said he would sit out three weeks with a sprained ankle, which would have kept him out past the Mar. 15 trade deadline. After the deadline passed, and Howard remained in Orlando, King announced Mar. 23 in Atlanta that a CT scan had discovered a "line'' in the broken bone that indicated it had not completely healed. King said at that time the team would shut Lopez down for two weeks, updating his status today.
King said Lopez is "close'' to being healed.
"By the end of the season, he should be pretty healed,'' King said.
Lopez is a restricted free agent after the season, and this may affect the market for him. However, with all the controversy in Orlando surrounding Howard and his request to Magic management that the team fire coach Stan Van Gundy, Howard -- who is only signed through the 2012-13 season -- could be back on the trading block this summer. The Nets once again could be looking to sign Lopez and trade him to Orlando as the main piece of a package to get Howard, the six-time All Star center.
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