Brooklyn Nets: 5 takeaways from a familiar-looking loss at Detroit

5. Why is Kenneth Faried nailed to the bench?

Before Wednesday night’s game against the Detroit Pistons, Brooklyn Nets coach Kenny Atkinson told the media there were a couple of potential options to help out at the 4.

Jared Dudley was penciled in to start, but Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, DeMarre Carroll and Alan Williams were unavailable.

While Rodions Kurucs played 11 minutes in the game, Kenneth Faried never got off the bench, meaning he still hasn’t played in a regular-season NBA game since Feb. 1.

With Blake Griffin pushing around Jared Dudley and Treveon Graham, players who came up playing the 2 and the 3 before the small-ball revolution turned everyone who ever played small forward into a 4, Atkinson never turned to the 6-foot-8, 228-pound Faried to try and counter Griffin.

Given that Faried is a decent low-post defender and a rebounding machine — averaging 11.9 boards per 36 minutes over his seven NBA seasons — he seemed a fairly logical choice.

Faried missed the first two games of the preseason with what was called soreness in his left ankle, then played 21 minutes against the Toronto Raptors in the Montreal debacle. But he was held out of the preseason finale and took a DNP-CD on Wednesday.

Is it just a matter of conditioning? Is the ankle still an issue? It just seemed very strange that Atkinson rolled with Dudley for 36 minutes while not giving Faried any burn at all.