Egor Dëmin to miss third straight game vs. Heat as Nets seek cleaner rematch in Miami
· Yahoo Sports
Egor Dëmin will miss his third straight game Thursday night when the Nets face the Miami Heat again at Kaseya Center, keeping Brooklyn without one of its rookie playmakers as it tries to respond to Tuesday’s lopsided loss.
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Dëmin remains out with left plantar fascia injury management. The absence comes as the Nets look for better ball security after Miami used Brooklyn’s mistakes to break the game open two nights earlier.
“Right now, he’s not good to go,” head coach Jordi Fernández said. “We’ll see what the next step is. It’s important that we manage them.”
Tuesday’s 124-98 defeat, Brooklyn’s ninth straight, swung on possessions. The Nets committed 19 turnovers and the Heat converted them into 20 points, repeatedly turning live-ball mistakes into quick offense. Fernández addressed it plainly afterward, pointing to the giveaways as the separator in a game that got away from his team early and never came back.
Dëmin’s availability matters because Brooklyn has leaned on its rookies to keep the offense organized. The 20-year-old missed training camp and most of the preseason because he was rehabbing his plantar fascia tear. With him sidelined again, the Nets will ask the remaining guards to clean up the decision-making that fueled Miami’s runs in the opener of this two-game set.
“As rookies, they come in, and usually when they do a lot of draft workouts their summer is not perfect because they go through a lot,” Fernández said. “It’s almost like they’re missing a summer. They do play summer league, but it’s not a real summer. Then you get into training camp, and it feels like you go into playing right away.”
The third consecutive absence also matters in terms of development. For a young player, missing a short stretch doesn’t erase progress, but it does interrupt the rhythm that comes from nightly reps, especially for a rookie adjusting to the NBA.
When available, Dëmin has averaged 10.3 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game while shooting 39.9% from the field and 38.5% from 3-point range. He’s also already carried a significant workload, logging 1,308 minutes in 52 appearances, which ranks fourth on the team behind Nic Claxton, Michael Porter Jr. and Noah Clowney.
For Dëmin, the focus shifts to what it looks like when he returns, whether his movement is clean and whether he can regain timing quickly. The Nets sit second in the lottery standings, three games behind the Sacramento Kings for the best odds at the No. 1 pick.
Fellow rookie Drake Powell remains on G League assignment.
“You see it sometimes; a lot of people talk about the rookie wall,” Fernández said. “Mentally and physically, there’s a lot of things that we still have to do better to help them overcome the adversity of how different the NBA schedule is. It’s important that we do what’s best for his body and moving forward for him.”