Jason Collins won’t wag his finger a la Dikembe Mutombo after blocking a shot.
“Maybe I will after I take a charge,” the Nets second-year center joked.
And that may sum up the difference between Collins, a glamorous as a navy-blue suit guy, and Mutombo, the perennial All-Star caliber center with hard-to-miss credentials. Collins does the little stuff: like taking charges, boxing out, getting to the right spot on the floor.
“He is not going to be the guy that they talk about in blocking shots in the scouting reports but fundamentally he will do all the little things. The smaller things will be a bigger factor with [Collins] than with Deke,” said Jason Kidd, who maintained the Nets “are still the team to beat” in the East despite Mutombo’s injury. “He plays the game right.”
So the Nets bank on Collins doing all those things for the next four months or however long they are minus Mutombo, who underwent successful surgery to repair an acute right wrist ligament tear yesterday. The surgery, performed in Manhattan by specialist Dr. Charles Melone, will keep Mutombo in a cast for eight weeks.
“After that it depends on how his rehab goes,” explained team president Rod Thorn. “He has to regain range of motion in his wrist before he’ll be able to play so it’ll be somewhere between 12 and 16 weeks, we hope. Assuming everything goes fine.”
Lose your center and panic can occur. But the Nets seem remarkably calm. Well, they went through a similar scenario last year. Todd MacCulloch, traded with Keith Van Horn for Mutombo, missed 20 games in the second half – 16 consecutively – because of plantar fasciitis in his left foot. Collins started eight of those games; Aaron Williams handled the rest. In the 20 games, all with increased time, Collins averaged 7.5 points and 5.3 rebounds.
“Obviously, it wasn’t to this extent where he was going to miss so many games but we went through it with Todd,” reminded Byron Scott. “So everybody is trying to make it seem like this is going to be very devastating to us, but we had to go through the same thing pretty much last year.
“I think they’re looking forward to the challenge. [Collins] and Aaron are looking forward to stepping up.”
Even with Mutombo out, the Nets can put a formidably-sized lineup out there with Jefferson playing the two (“Something I’ve considered,” Scott admitted) with Kenyon Martin back at three and then a combo of Collins, Rodney Rogers and Williams for four and five. They can go big, small. They’re versatile, smart.
“He’s very intelligent on the court,” Scott said. “When you talk about one guy who makes sure his man doesn’t get the ball, it’s Jason Collins. So I don’t think you’re going to see any real subtle differences in the way we play.”