Kyrie Irving's recovery from a shoulder injury has progressed slower than anticipated. The Brooklyn Nets have already ruled him out for Thursday's game against the New York Knicks, but they had expected him to take some sort of contact by now, which he hasn't been able to do yet, according to SNY's Ian Begley.
Irving has missed the team's last 18 games with this lingering shoulder injury, but the Nets have managed to rebound from a 4-7 start, winning 12 of their last 18 outings with Spencer Dinwiddie taking over the starting point guard spot.
The Nets were largely expected to be utmost careful with Irving's injury, hoping he'd be healthy enough for a playoff run, but it seems his recovery is just taking longer than first anticipated.
Brooklyn hasn't missed a beat with Dinwiddie running point, but it can benefit from the impending return of Caris LeVert, a potent scorer and playmaker that can run next to Dinwiddie and fortify a backcourt that has depended in Garrett Temple and the occasional shooting of Joe Harris.
Irving has already missed out on a potential bonus that would pay him an extra $125,000 for playing in 70 games this season, but he is in line to be kept in the shelf until 2020, considering the progress he must make before taking the court.
The perennial All-Star averaged 28.5 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 7.2 assists per game in his first 11 appearances with Brooklyn since signing a four-year, incentive-filled $136.5 million contract this summer.
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