Nets’ Dariq Whitehead finally healthy at summer league after lengthy injury battle

LAS VEGAS — Wins and losses in summer league don’t count for much.

But don’t try to tell Brooklyn’s Dariq Whitehead that summer league doesn’t matter.

Not after it’s taken him 1 ½ years, three surgeries and countless hours of rehab to get to this point.

Not after all the work he’s put in to finally be healthy for the first time since high school, when he was the top scholastic prospect in the country.

For Whitehead — plagued by injury in his lone year at Duke and a rookie campaign with the Nets that saw him limited to just two NBA cameos — being fit for the Las Vegas Summer League opener Friday against Indiana is everything.

“For me, I’d say it’s exciting. Not being able to go out there and play how I needed to play in the year-and-a-half and finally being able to do so, it’s exciting for me,” Whitehead said. “I’m excited for [Friday], to go out there and be able to just play hard. I feel like in the past year-and-a-half, any time I played, I was coasting.