Ben Simmons 'Still Isn't Able to Do Anything' with Back Injury, Nets' Steve Nash Says

Brooklyn Nets head coach Steve Nash told reporters Sunday that power forward Ben Simmons still isn't able to do anything from a basketball perspective with his ongoing back injury and was unable to provide an update on when he might return. 

He added that he is still hoping Simmons can play for the team this season. 

ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski and Ramona Shelburne reported this past week that Simmons "has remained sidelined with an irritation of the L-4 disc of the lower spine and hope remains he can return for a 'couple' of regular-season games prior to the Eastern Conference playoffs."

He reportedly re-aggravated a pre-existing back injury while ramping up his condition after he was dealt to the Nets in the James Harden trade with the Philadelphia 76ers. He's undergone an MRI and received an epidural—a pain-killing injection—for the issue. 

Nash told reporters Simmons is now only focused on doing rehab for the injury and isn't doing any on-court work. 

"The physical therapist just works on his rehabilitation," he said. "I wasn't on [the table] working on him. They do what they do in a clinical setting and try to improve his condition. ... A lot of bio-mechanical work, manual therapy, all sorts of stuff to get him in a position to start to move in the right sequence and fashion."

Andre Drummond, who also came to the Nets in the Harden trade, said the Nets were making sure Simmons still felt like part of the team.

"I think we all do a good job of keeping him engaged and keeping him in the loop with everything," he told reporters. "He's at all the shootarounds, he's at practice whenever he's not rehabbing. So he's always around, it's not like he's not around us. He's on the planes, he's with us on team trips. He's there with us. Just waiting for him to come back and play."

Simmons is running out of time, however. The 37-34 Nets have just 11 games remaining in the regular season and are currently headed to the play-in tournament as the No. 8 team in the Eastern Conference. If that tourney started today, the Nets would be traveling to Toronto for the first game, where the unvaccinated Kyrie Irving would be ineligible to play. 

So it's possible that the Nets could be without both Irving and Simmons for that game. Lose, and they would then host a home game where, again, Irving would not be eligible to play given New York City's vaccine mandate for private sector workers. 

So getting Simmons back healthy and ready to go as quickly as possible is crucial for these Nets. There simply remains a veil of mystery as to when that will actually happen.