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Tuesday was a big day in Sergey Karasev's recovery from his serious knee surgery five months ago. He dunked for the first time.
After starting 16 games for the Nets, with mixed results, he suffered a broken knee cap that required some serious surgery back in March and a lot of recovery and then rehab. Back then, the Nets medical and training staffs predicted a return to full contact basketball sometime in August. As Willie Reed tweeted, after Karasev posted his dunk on Instagram, "he's close"
The road back has been long and Karasev has chronicled it all. Like 100 out of 101 at the foul line before he was permitted to shoot jumpers...
Then, when he could, a lot of three pointers without a miss...
A trick shot or two to top things off...
And a lot of this...
The Nets have a big decision to make on the 6'7" Russian by October 31. That's the day they have to decide whether to pick up his fourth year option, at $2.5 million, a big jump from his current third year salary of $1.6 million.
We'll see what they do, but remember, that $2.5 million is a lot less intimidating now that the Nets are under the luxury tax threshold and will be $40 million under the salary CAP, not the threshold next year. Moreover, he is only a little more than a year older than Chris McCullough.