Joe Harris’ return from ankle surgery is roughly two weeks away

It’s been seven weeks since Joe Harris last played a game for the Nets and five weeks since Brooklyn’s star marksman underwent ankle surgery in late November.

Now add “a couple weeks — in that ballpark” until he returns to a team that could desperately use the floor-spacing provided by one of the league’s most vaunted shooters.

Nets head coach Steve Nash said Harris still must clear several benchmarks before returning to the lineup likely sometime later this month and that Harris has yet to begin his ramp-up process.

“I’m not even sure if (ramping-up) is next on the card,” Nash said ahead of Brooklyn’s matchup against the Memphis Grizzlies on Monday. “I think he still is letting some irritation settle and then we’ll ramp up accordingly. I couldn’t put a timeline on it but I do feel confident that this is something that will resolve itself and we won’t look back.”

Here is the timeline of how things have unfolded for Harris, who shot 60.5% from downtown in the month of November before his untimely injury.

Harris severely sprained his ankle in a Nov. 14 matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the final game in a six-game road trip of which the Nets won five games. Harris had sustained an injury to the same ankle in Brooklyn’s final regular-season game of the COVID-shortened season that entered the Orlando bubble in 2020. He used the NBA’s month-long hiatus to rehab the ankle.

Two weeks after his injury in Oklahoma City, Harris opted to undergo arthroscopic surgery to remove a bone particle from his left ankle. On Dec. 29, one month after Harris’ surgery, Nash said Harris had made progress with his ankle.

“He’s doing some shooting, some court work, some conditioning,” he said. “Still working through his rehab and ramping up. He’s not necessarily out of the woods yet. He’s got some work to do.”

While reports surfaced with a four-to-eight-week injury timeline, Nash said the Nets and Harris are more concerned about preventing future injury than rushing him back to the floor.

“I’m not exactly sure what he’s able to do right now because there have been different iterations on his rehab,” the coach said. “He’s still got a couple weeks — in that ballpark. We’ll see how it goes. It could take longer than that. Whatever the length of time it is, for me I just want it to be behind him when he comes out of it. We all feel pretty confident in that. So, I’m less stressed about when he comes back and more stressed about long term prognosis when he comes back.”

Patty Mills has slotted into the starting lineup to provide the shooting the Nets lost when Harris went down. Mills, who hangs his hat on being a professional on and off the court, said Harris inspired him by how he attacks his craft even when injured.

“Just a true professional being able to go about his business in every right manner: rehab-wise, in the treatment room, in the weight room, on the court,” said Mills. “He’s probably a good role model for all the young guys to understand when you go through something like that, to be able to have good energy and high spirits, to be able to get your stuff done so you can get back out on the floor. So it’s been very impressive for me to watch him go about his business as a professional like that.”

Nets big man Nic Claxton says he and Harris have bonded over time spent off the floor. Claxton has been off the court for a variety of reasons — injuries, COVID-19 and a reported bout of mononucleosis — and feels Harris’ pain having to watch helplessly from the sidelines while his team misses its best shooter.

Claxton echoed sentiments shared organizationally from top-down:

“He’s come a long way (in his rehab),” he said Monday after shootaround. “He definitely — we need him. We definitely need him. We need some more floor spacing, but he’s come a long way. He’s working every day. He’s being really, really positive, and I try to check-in with him just seeing how he’s doing mentally …  he hasn’t missed many games throughout his career, so he’s progressing and we definitely can’t wait to have him back.”