Nic Claxton was sidelined Sunday during the Nets’ win over Chicago with a sprain of the same left ankle that cost him eight straight games earlier this season.
The Nets’ starting center twisted it during Saturday’s victory over Miami.
With 1:09 left in the first quarter against the Heat, Claxton went down and was looked at by training staff. He eventually walked off under his own power, and went down the tunnel to the locker room.
Claxton ended up checking back in with 7:34 left in the half and finishing the game with 13 points, six rebounds and three blocks in 24 minutes 4 seconds of playing time. But he was sidelined Sunday against the Bulls.
“Yeah, so you saw in the game the other day,” Nets coach Jacque Vaughn said beforehand. “He kind of tweaked that ankle again. It’s the same one.
“I think he might be listed as probable. He’ll do his warm-up and hopefully he’s ready to go. He did participate in our shootaround earlier.”
After initially being listed as probable, Claxton was downgraded to questionable before being scratched less than an hour before tipoff.
Claxton suffered the initial high ankle sprain in the Oct. 25 season-opening loss to Cleveland, missing over two weeks and not returning until Nov. 12.
Vaughn and the Nets had been expecting injured Cam Thomas to resume practice this week. They’re still hopeful he’ll be fit to, although with no official practice days on the docket, they might have to get creative.
“Yeah, you didn’t participate in shootaround or whatever we had this walk-through [Sunday, Monday’s] an off day, so that kind of puts him in a tough position for us to schedule an actual practice for him,” said Vaughn. “So hopefully we’ll get to a point where we can simulate some things with some video guys and also with some G-League guys maybe in this week coming up.”
Thomas — whose 26.9 points would be ninth in the league if he qualified — missed his eighth game in a row with a sprained left ankle. Ben Simmons (nerve impingement) missed his ninth straight, and Dennis Smith Jr. was out with a lower-back sprain.
Dorian Finney-Smith got the nod as a small-ball stretch 5 with Claxton out, finishing with nine points and four rebounds. He entered the game fifth in the league in catch-and-shoot 3-pointers made at 40 and made 3 of 7 from 3-point range Sunday night. His 45.1 percentage from deep was fourth among players who had attempted at least 90 3s.
“He’s going to get opportunities, and hopefully we unleashed that mentally when I said to him ‘Shoot eight 3s, bro. Go ahead, shoot them. We want you to shoot them, we believe in you. You’ve done it in the past,’ ” Vaughn said. “The last three, five years he was 40-something percent on corner 3s. … So he has the résumé behind it and we want to encourage him to keep shooting.”
Cam Johnson was forced out of Sunday’s win with right leg cramping, the second game he’s left early this season due to cramping.
“Some cramping. … That’s why he couldn’t finish the game for us,” said Vaughn
Johnson had 10 points and a career-high six assists. He shot 4 of 8 overall and 2 of 5 from deep.
