KD Embracing Role Of Shorthanded Nets Spiritual Leader
The beginning of the fourth quarter of Brooklyn’s matchup with visiting Utah on Monday night was supposed to be Kevin Durant’s rest period. To that point, the Nets superstar had accumulated a ho-hum 30 points to go along with 6 assists and 4 rebounds to help his shorthanded club to a 91-75 lead.
Over the ensuing 3:55 seconds of game time, however, KD maybe caught a few seconds of actual rest. Mostly, he was on his feet, as animated as ever, exhorting his teammates to scrap against the fourth seed in the Western Conference until he could reenter the contest. Durant was so excited after Nets reserve guard Patty Mills knocked down back-to-back three-pointers on the far end that he jumped into the playing surface of the court.
Of course, when Durant officially returned to the action, his demeanor was all business, even through multiple trash-talking incidents. Durant tacked on another seven points and made two huge plays in crunch time to help Brooklyn (38-34) hold off the Jazz’s late run in their 114-106 victory.
We all know who he is—the NBA’s 22nd highest All-Time scorer after passing Jerry West on Monday night. Watching him put on nightly clinics on how to get buckets at an elite level has been a rare pleasure for Nets fans during this trying season. But how KD has embraced the role of a leader as the Nets Big 3 got halved by the trade of James Harden to Philadelphia last month and Kyrie Irving’s part-time status has been just as eye-opening.
You notice the little things, like how he often manages to sit next to newcomer Ben Simmons on the Brooklyn bench to get him comfortable after Simmons’ toxic ending in Philadelphia. On the court, he’s always teaching, always encouraging.
Obviously, Durant’s imprint on the Nets is most felt when he has the ball in his hands. Utah finally decided to double-team him for most of the fourth quarter, but, other than a pair of bad passes with the Nets up by double digits, KD kept making the correct basketball plays. When a Rudy Gobert dunk cut Brooklyn’s lead to 110-102 with 1:38 remaining, Durant went to work, eluding the Jazz defense to create space at the right elbow for his patented mid-range jump shot. Then, after Utah responded to cut their deficit to six points, Durant crossed over Gobert—this time going left--to get away from the double team and into the paint. As the help defense converged on him, KD delivered a perfect alley oop to Nic Claxton for the dagger dunk with 37 seconds remaining, his eighth assist of the evening.
Utah may have been on a back-to-back and were missing starting forward Bojan Bogdanovic, but their woes were nothing compared to Brooklyn’s, whose players have been dropping like flies. The Nets entered Monday’s game with only 10 available players and then took another hit in the second quarter when guard Seth Curry slipped and injured an already sore ankle (Nets Head Coach Steve Nash said after the game that it was a different injury than the one that forced Curry to miss three games last week and possibly not all that severe, though with this team, seeing is believing).
It's crazy to think that after Durant, the Jazz possessed at least the next four best players, including sublime superstar Donovan Mitchell, who finished with 30 points, and that guard Goran Dragic, who was a game-time decision due to a sore left knee, was the only other Brooklyn member with any ability to create offense in lineups that were awfully light in the three-point shooting department.
Yet KD somehow has been more than enough in so many of games like these where the Nets would not otherwise stand a chance. These displays of awesomeness—this was the ninth time in 45 games this season that he exceeded 35 points--have become so prevalent that they’re almost run-of-the-mill. If not for an MCL sprain that cost him 21 games, he’d surely be in the conversation for the league’s Most Valuable Player.
Since his return on March 3, Durant is averaging 30.8 ppg with a 55/41.5/92.4 shooting split. The Nets are 6-3 in that stretch and would be on a seven-game winning streak if not for old friend Spencer Dinwiddie’s buzzer-beating three-pointer that gave Dallas a two-point victory last week.
Though the Nets are in the midst of a fight for playoff seeding, hoping to avoid the 9/10 single elimination game, Durant’s play has them within reach (3 games) of the sixth seed, an almost unthinkable development when Brooklyn was sliding down the East standings two weeks ago.
Looking at the big picture, Durant has taken ownership of his team. In August, he signed an extension that commits him to Brooklyn until after the 2025-26 season. All the adversity that has plagued this organization this season--from Irving’s decision in training camp to not get injected with the COVID-19 vaccine, preventing him from playing in cities (like New York) that have vaccine mandates, to the Harden drama leading to his exit strategy to get out of Brooklyn, and through all the injuries—you could always count on Durant, when healthy, to be more than easy money in the bank. He’s Brooklyn’s spiritual leader.
And though this season may turn out to be a waste of one of Durant’s prime years, he made a point of saying at Monday’s shootaround that such a disappointment won’t close the Nets’ championship window.
"I'm not guaranteeing that we got a championship," Durant said. "But I just like what we're building. And I'm not going to say this is the only year we've got an opportunity to fight and work towards something. I don't think next year we've got to start all the way over and try to figure out what's the next iteration of the Nets. I feel like we can just build on what we have and see what happens. We got guys that are committed and want to be here."
When the best basketball player on the planet expresses those sentiments, it’s hard to stay gloomy about the Nets’ future.