Steve Nash: Back issue keeping Ben Simmons from basketball activities

Head coach Steve Nash and the Brooklyn Nets maintain that they hope to have Ben Simmons play before the end of the regular season. That goal, however, is looking less realistic with each passing day.

Nash made a somewhat worrying admission about Simmons on Sunday, saying that the former No. 1 pick is not even taking part in basketball activity at this point. Instead, he is receiving treatment on his injured back.

“The physical therapist just works on his rehabilitation,” Nash said, via Kristian Winfield of the New York Daily News. “I wasn’t on [the table] working on him. They do what they do in a clinical setting and try to improve his condition. … A lot of bio-mechanical work, manual therapy, all sorts of stuff to get him in a position to start to move in the right sequence and fashion.”

The Nets have 11 regular season games remaining, and if Simmons does not start progressing soon it becomes difficult to see how he plays in any of them. He still has yet to appear in a game since Brooklyn acquired him in a blockbuster trade deadline deal.

Simmons was supposed to be close to a debut a month ago, but the back issue scuttled that. Now there is an open question whether he’ll even play this season.