Richard Jefferson will have ankle surgery soon and this will be a huge blow to the Nets.  They had been playing their best basketball of the season and this will definately hurt their offense.  Jefferson was averaging 16.1 points, 4.5 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game this season.  The Nets may have to look to make a trade because the bench doesn’t have alot of potential to replace Jefferson’s offense.

The most likely replacement is Bostjan Nachbar.  Nachbar is averaging 6.1 points, 2.4 rebounds and 0.7 assists per game.  He’s the best three-point shooter of the bench bunch but he’s only hitting 38.4% from the floor overall.  He also will be a defensive liability.  Antoine Wright is probably next in line for playing time and he’s only averaging 4.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 0.8 assists.  He’s also not shooting well as he’s only hitting 39.2% from the floor this season.

Another way the Nets could go would be starting Eddie House at shooting guard and moving Vince Carter to small forward.  House is averaging 6.2 points, 1.4 rebounds and 0.9 assists per game.  He’s only hitting 38.9% from the floor this season but he has a reputation as instant offense off the bench, so this might be the best way for the Nets to go.

This was a huge blow to the Nets as they’ve been playing very well as of late.  It will be interesting to see if they can somehow keep that up.