Nets’ Trendon Watford set for season debut in second Knicks clash
Trendon Watford is cleared to make his season debut for Brooklyn.
The Nets will be without starting center Nic Claxton for at least a week, but they’re set to get their forward back from his hamstring injury.
The 24-year-old Watford has been removed from the injury report for Sunday’s game at the Knicks.
The versatile forward had been set to debut earlier this month, but suffered a setback to his hamstring.
Watford averaged 6.9 points and 3.1 rebounds in 13.6 minutes for the Nets last season.
When he got a chance during Brooklyn’s youth movement down the stretch, he raised his production to 12.9 points and 5.7 boards in 25.4 minutes over the final 11 games.
Ziaire Williams was added to the injury report, listed as questionable with right hip tightness.
Claxton (lower back strain), Bojan Bogdanovic (left foot injury recovery) and Day’Ron Sharpe (left hamstring strain) are all out Sunday.
Jaylen Martin and Dariq Whitehead will be on G League assignment.
Claxton’s lower back strain doesn’t just hurt the Nets at center, it handicaps them at point guard as well.
With Claxton and Sharpe their only two natural centers, Ben Simmons is taken away from his natural position as a lead guard.
Under Jordi Fernandez, the Nets aren’t just aggressive with their physical challenges. They’re aggressive with their coach’s challenges, too.
Through 13 games, the Nets have already challenged calls 16 times. And they have a solid 10-6 record.
The Nets have won four of their past five challenges, including both late in Friday’s 124-122 loss at the Garden to help erase a 21-point deficit.
“Yeah, I think I have the best challenge coach in the league, so I trust him,” Fernandez said of assistant Connor Griffin. “And so far Connor has done an amazing job. So I’ve got to trust whoever does that job. And obviously me as a head coach going through it, I have to ask him, have the feel for it. But those were huge. Those are part of the rules.
“And you cannot control [it] all the time. You can have a feel for it. When also you’re behind, sometimes you want to maybe take a little more of the risk. But we’re not going to take those challenges home. That’s something we know. It punished at the end, because we didn’t have the timeout. But if we don’t win those challenges, we don’t get there having an opportunity to win. So, Connor did a great job.”
Griffin had worked with Fernandez in Denver, where he’d been the assistant video coordinator in 2021-22 and Fernandez an assistant coach.
When Fernandez became head coach of Team Canada, he added Griffin as an assistant, and brought him to Brooklyn this offseason, prying him from the Nuggets, with whom he’d been head video coordinator/player development.