NEW YORK — After missing six weeks that turned out to be catastrophic and franchise-altering for the Nets, Kevin Durant is back. The superstar small forward will return Thursday night in Brooklyn against the Eastern Conference-leading Heat.
Durant sprained the MCL in his left knee against the Pelicans on Jan. 15, knocking him out for 21 games over the last six weeks. The Nets have tumbled down the standings in that time, going 5-16 without Durant after a 27-15 start to the season.
He was an MVP front-runner before going down, averaging 29 points in his 36 games. While he might not play enough games to win the MVP, his extreme value was underscored by his absence as the Nets collapsed. James Harden saw the load he would have to carry in half the games with the unvaccinated Kyrie Irving unavailable at home, and tanked his performance to the point where anything but a trade was untenable.
With all three prongs of the superstar trio missing at home, the bottom completely fell out. The Nets won a single home game at the Barclays Center in Durant’s six-week absence, and didn’t fare much better on the road in that stretch, going 4-10. Irving is still unavailable at home despite some vaccine restrictions lifting in New York, and there’s been no positive news from the murky injury situations of Joe Harris and Ben Simmons. Recently, multiple negative reports surfaced about the state of Simmons’ back. Simmons is “frankly not close” and “week to week,” according to ESPN. Irving will only be eligible to play in seven more regular-season games, with one of the eight remaining road dates at Madison Square Garden.
So Durant will likely have to carry the load himself, as the Nets’ second best player against Miami on Thursday might be Seth Curry or the ice-cold Patty Mills. But Durant is used to that, and more than capable of it. That’s good news for the Nets, who are approaching desperation. They’re eighth in the East, a full 4.5 games out of avoiding the play-in with just 19 remaining. (At three games ahead of the 11th-place Wizards, they’re closer to missing the playoffs than avoiding the play-in.)
Durant’s teammates know it, and were humbled by the experience of him being out.
“We all know who we have coming back, and we all know what we have to do to help,” James Johnson said after yet another loss Tuesday night. “I feel like this shined a huge light on the rest of us that felt like (we were getting) no chance, or getting different chances, or getting different minutes and things like that.”
That light was not flattering. The Nets truly saw what they had in the last six weeks, and there were some genuine revelations, like rookie Cam Thomas. But for the most part, everyone has to be grateful that their MVP is back.
