Kevin Durant’s former teammate believed the Nets star was beaten down by the Celtics to the point of surrender during his Game 3 dud.
“The Celtics have snatched the Nets soul,” Kendrick Perkins said on the Celtics postgame show for NBC Sports Boston on Sunday. “They’re punking them. They’re punking KD. They done made Kevin Durant quit. He had no interest at all in playing this game. He was not engaged.”
Durant, 33, managed just 11 shots in Saturday’s 109-103 defeat to the Celtics, sending the Nets into a 3-0 series hole and requiring a victory Monday to avoid an embarrassing sweep.
Kyrie Irving also struggled Saturday while scoring just 16 points on 6-for-17 shooting.
“Think about this for a second,” Perkins said. “Some people were saying that KD and Kyrie were the most skilled duo of all time. And what did we just witness? We witnessed the Boston Celtics make both of those guys quit during a crucial Game 3 at home.
“That’s why I have the Celtics winning the championship this year. Because if you could do that to Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, you could do it to anybody else in the NBA.”
Perkins, now a media personality with ESPN, played with Durant for five seasons in OKC after winning a title with the Celtics in 2008. His assessment of Durant giving up in Game 3 seems overblown, however, since the Nets’ game plan Saturday was for the former MVP to play off the ball.
Durant said he devised the scheme after watching film of his offense being stifled in Games 1 and 2. But he quickly second-guessed the strategy.
“The first two games I just felt like there wasn’t a lot of space for me to operate to score, so I didn’t want to force it (in Game 3),” Durant said. “Maybe that’s the wrong decision coming into this game. Maybe I should have been more aggressive to score.”
Durant is averaging just 22 points in the series on 38.5% shooting, well below his playoff career averages of 29.4 points on 47.6% from the field. Another theory is that Durant and Irving are gassed after logging heavy and intense minutes to end the season, a necessity of falling into the play-in tournament.
Coach Steve Nash agreed with that premise and added that Irving’s fasting for Ramadan is taking a physical toll.
“They’ve both got to be tired,” Nash said. “Kyrie’s fasting and Kevin’s had to play 40-plus minutes for five, six weeks after missing six, seven weeks (with a knee injury). We needed him to play 40 minutes or we wouldn’t be in the playoffs or we’d be 10th in the play-in. I’m sure that’s taken a big toll on Kevin. He’s carried a huge burden for us for weeks on end.
“Kyrie as well since he’s been playing home and on the road and fasting, it can’t be easy. I go play tennis and if I haven’t eaten I feel like I’m going to fall over so I can’t imagine how he feels in an NBA playoff game. … I feel for him. I feel for those guys.”
Durant disputed his coach’s excuse.
“I don’t think fatigue set in,” he said. “I feel good playing. I’m not winded. My body doesn’t hurt. I wouldn’t blame it on that.”
