Nets may sit James Harden vs. Hawks after resting Kevin Durant, LaMarcus Aldridge vs. Rockets

ATLANTA – When the Nets face the Hawks Friday night at State Farm Arena, it will mark their third game in four nights at the start of a four-game trip that ends Sunday in Detroit. That means it might be time to rest James Harden after they rested veterans Kevin Durant and LaMarcus Aldridge in the second game of a back-to-back Wednesday in Houston.

Harden played 81 minutes in the back-to-back, and while he scored 25 points in a loss to his former Rockets team, he was held to 4 of 16 shooting while trying to shoulder the offensive load for a team that was trying to blend in rookies David Duke Jr. and Cam Thomas.

Asked on Wednesday if he expected to sit in Atlanta, a weary Harden said, "We’ll see how I feel [Thursday], and we’ll see how I feel Friday. We’ll just take it day by day, but yeah, it seems like the more that we rest, the fewer players we have, which is the tricky part about the entire game. It’s something we have to deal with as a unit."

In addition to resting Durant and Aldridge, the Nets have gone all season without Kyrie Irving because of his failure to comply with the New York City vaccine mandate, and three-point specialist Joe Harris recently underwent ankle surgery that will sideline him up to two months. So Nets coach Steve Nash had to dig deep into his roster in Houston, which resulted in Duke seeing his first NBA action in a game in which he and Thomas played the entire fourth quarter in a comeback attempt.

Harden agreed it was a challenge to integrate Duke, who scored nine points and was one of only two Nets to finish with a positive plus-minus rating. Thomas had 18 points.

"Very, very difficult, but give credit to Duke," Harden said. "He played extremely hard, he played well, he came in and did what he was supposed to do. That’s all you can ask for from a young guy. He played extremely well, and much respect to him for that."

Duke made the Nets as an undrafted free agent out of Providence and spent much of his time rehabbing a recent injury, but he was ready when his time came.

"I can’t enjoy it too much because, at the end of the day, I really wanted that win," Duke said. "it didn’t really hit me this was my first NBA game until after like five minutes on the court. I was like, ‘All right, I’m here now, I’m just trying to win.’ Playing with passion, energy. We came up short.

"After the game, sitting down in the locker room, I was like, ‘I just played my first real NBA game.’ It was a blessing. Hopefully, I can stack days on top of each other and really make an impact with this team."

In the end, Nash hopes to blend more new faces to build the Nets’ depth. "You’re putting out lineups that have never played together to see if they can find that connectivity and that understanding," Nash said. "Although we lost the game, maybe this pays forward a little bit."

By Greg Logan

Gregory.Logan@newsday.comGregLogan1

Greg Logan has worked for Newsday since 1982 covering a wide array of sports and events, currently including the Brooklyn Nets beat.