And the wait begins.
Nets star Kevin Durant exited Saturday’s game against the New Orleans Pelicans with a sprained MCL and is out indefinitely. Steve Nash said it’s going to be “a few weeks” before the team re-evaluates Durant.
“I think we don’t have a timeline,” the Nets head coach said on Monday. “So right now we’re just going to wait and see how it heals and how he recovers over the next few weeks, and then there will be more of an evaluation and hopefully some sort of timeline.”
Durant limped off the court in the second quarter of the Pelicans matchup after Bruce Brown was pushed to the floor and incidentally fell directly into the Nets star’s knee. Durant’s knee appeared to hyperextend inward and he needed assistance getting off the floor.
Nash declined to provide a grade for Durant’s MCL sprain, which would explain how bad his injury is, but said he isn’t surprised by the severity of Durant’s injury.
“I think that these things can be very innocuous looking from the outside,” he said, “but the wrong angle, the wrong timing can be pretty dangerous. So I wouldn’t say I’m surprised. I would say I’m kind of more used to these things being random and difficult to assess from a video at times, and I think it’s just a really unfortunate play.”
Without Durant, the Nets are a totally different team. They immediately became Las Vegas underdogs in their Martin Luther King Jr. Day matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers when the line was adjusted after his diagnosis.
Nash couldn’t pinpoint any one way the Nets would be hurt most by Durant’s absence. He is expected to miss at minimum a month of action.
“Obviously we lose a scorer of the highest caliber. We also lose size and defense,” Nash said. “He’s such a well-rounded player, does so many things at a high level. Plus he gives a small team size on the perimeter at least. There’s so many ways that his absence will be felt.
“Having said that, it’s a great opportunity for guys,” Nash continued. “Like I said, it’s an opportunity for our team to grow. We can’t rely on him in ways that we could and we have to find ways for solutions to be competitive without him.”
Without Durant, the Nets will also spend more time without their Big 3 on the floor together. Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden have played just 16 games together since the Nets acquired Harden ahead of last season’s trade deadline. They are 13-3 in those games but with the unvaccinated Irving’s availability limited to road games, the Nets have been unable to build that chemistry with their star guard in the rotation.
And as Irving returns, Durant exits. It’s been the story for this seasons’ Nets, who’ve been battered by injuries, COVID-19 and absences.
“If they get a bunch of games together, great. If they don’t, they don’t, then we play the card we’re dealt,” Nash said. “It’s a little bit out of our hands and we just have to do the best we can. We can’t cry about it. We can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We’ve got to keep building, see what we can learn and how we can grow during this period of Kevin being out and Joe [Harris] being out and how we can continue to move this thing forward so when they do come back, we’re in a better place and further along and he can rejoin us in a place where we can feel better about where we are in that part of season.”
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