More than 300 days have passed since Kevin Durant ruptured the Achilles tendon in his right leg. Because it happened in last year’s NBA Finals, it robbed Durant — and the Nets team he joined last summer — of his first season in Brooklyn.
But the coronavirus pandemic has put this season on hold with the NBA now approaching two months since its last basketball games were played. If the NBA season resumes after its coronavirus hiatus, be it in Disney World or wherever the league chooses, will Durant finally make his Nets debut?
“It’s a $110 million question,” Nets GM Sean Marks admitted to Australian publication Newshub. “In all seriousness, we’ve tried not to talk about his timeline a lot.
“He knows his body better than anybody. Our performance team and training staff have done a tremendous job getting him to this point, but I just don’t know how coming out of this pandemic will affect anybody, let alone Kevin.”
Durant checked all the boxes in injury rehab. He slowly progressed from being unable to get lift on his shots, to getting elevation, then more elevation with turnaround jumpers. During the Nets last road trip out west, Durant was playing pickup basketball, and he was doing so at a high level.
But the manner in which Durant sustained his injury shrouds a potential return this season in uncertainty. While he was a member of the Warriors, Durant first suffered a severe calf strain in Game 5 of the Western Conference Semifinals against the Houston Rockets. The Warriors went on to win that series, then swept the Portland Trail Blazers in the conference finals, then struggled in the NBA Finals against the Toronto Raptors.
Durant returned in Game 5 of that series and ruptured the Achilles in the same leg he strained his calf.
“When you’ve got enough invested in a player like Kevin, we’re never going to push him to come back,” Marks said. “When the timing is right, he’ll be 100% when he gets on the court.
“I can tell you this though — before the pandemic, he looked like Kevin Durant and that’s a good thing.”
There’s one takeaway from Marks’ interview with Newshub: It’s the first time he’s given an answer other than “no” to the idea that Durant could return this season. His return would add another level of intrigue to a roller coaster ride of a season for the Nets.
Brooklyn fell short of expectations in Year 1 of the Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving era: Injuries kept Irving and Durant off the floor more than on, chemistry became an issue, Kenny Atkinson was dismissed as head coach and the Nets were on pace to finish this season with a record worse than last year’s.
Their woes have all been masked by the light at the end of the tunnel — the possibility of a real championship contender once Durant and Irving return healthy.
For once, Marks hasn’t unequivocally ruled out the possibility of Durant touching the floor this season. The other side, of course, is that he hasn’t ruled it in.
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