Nets’ Kyrie Irving expected to return in total about-face

Two months after going down with a shoulder impingement — and just a week after acknowledging that season-ending surgery was on the table — Kyrie Irving is expected to make his long-awaited return.

The Nets listed Irving as probable for Sunday’s game against Atlanta. And if the All-Star point guard actually suits up and faces the Hawks at Barclays Center, it’ll be his first game since Nov. 14.

“No [limitations] right now, other than just keeping my shoulder-maintenance program going before I get on the floor,” Irving said after returning to practice. “That’s the thing that I have to keep consistent throughout the season and probably for the rest of my career.”

Irving — whose 28.5 points, 7.2 assists and 5.4 assists when he went down were all on pace for career highs — put too much on his shoulders, both literally and figuratively.

After joining Kevin Durant in signing a max contract with the Nets this summer, Irving knew he’d have to carry much of the offensive load with his fellow superstar out with a ruptured Achilles tendon. Between suffering a facial fracture and having just two practices in a nine-day span due to the China trip, Irving overworked to make up for lost time.

Putting up extra shots every single day, Irving suffered a shoulder injury on Nov. 4, exacerbated it by playing Nov. 12 in Utah and two days later in Denver, and hasn’t played since.

It took a Christmas Eve cortisone shot, trips to see multiple specialists — some as far as Arizona — and rehab he acknowledged as monotonous to get to the point where he’s expected to return Sunday. He could face Atlanta’s Trae Young in a clash of the top two All-Star vote-getters among guards.

“When you’re out like that, it can be a lot of frustration, a lot of mental hurdles that you have to fight through,” Irving said. “Like I said, I saw so many different specialists on my shoulder and a lot of people asking questions.

“I became very quiet in my approach, because I didn’t know what the heck was going on with my shoulder. So after I got enough information and I could communicate that with the team, I felt like my goals could be realigned and I could move forward.”

The Nets are 13-13 since Irving went down, snapping a season-high seven-game losing skid on Friday against Miami, currently second in the East. They did it behind 26 points and a career-high 14 assists from Spencer Dinwiddie. Now potentially adding Irving to Dinwiddie and Caris LeVert gives coach Kenny Atkinson a tantalizing trio to close out games.

“We’ll be even better,” Atkinson had said of having LeVert for fourth quarters. Adding Irving to that mix improves it exponentially.

“Yeah, we’re going to stay aggressive. I’m going to do what they ask me to do when Kyrie gets back, whatever that means, still starting or coming off the bench. It’s all part of it,” Dinwiddie said. “As long as we get wins and try to do the best of our ability so we can try to hold the fort.”

LeVert had missed almost two months himself with ligament damage in his right (shooting) thumb. When Irving returns, the trio will be available for the first time since mid-November. They’ve shared the court together in just seven games.

“When I’m back and Caris is back, then we just figure out the offense and how to get our three-guard front to work really well,” Irving said. “The guys have done a great job. We’re doing the best we can. We’re going to make some tweaks offensively, but defensively, we’ve been pretty good.

“It just comes down to making shots on the offensive end and getting down the stretch, when they start trapping, we’ve got to make good decisions. But those guys are learning extremely well. I give them a bunch of credit for what they’ve been able to do; now we’ve just got to keep growing from this point.”