Kevin Durant spoiled us.
I’m not just talking about how some who follow the Nets take for granted his nightly greatness these last two-plus seasons, as if there’s anything easy about how he earned his Instagram handle of @EasyMoneySniper. Even at 34, KD has been as spectacular as ever this season (though his three-point efficiency over the 26-game sample is down from his career rate), and I’d argue that he might be slightly more well-rounded as a playmaker and defender.
Rather this is about how Durant bounced back from his June 2019 surgery to repair a ruptured Achilles suffered during the NBA Finals while with Golden State, one of the more difficult injuries to overcome, and didn’t miss a beat despite sitting out the entre subsequent season in Brooklyn.
Upon his return to the court 561 days later, Durant scored 22 points in a blowout over his former Warriors mates. The lopsided score allowed him to check out after 25 minutes, but, other than sitting out a few games in back-to-backs, he wasn’t exactly babied thereafter. He went on to average 37.6 minutes over his next 16 games before a faulty COVID-19 test and a hamstring injury sidelined him for a month-and-a-half. For the record, he averaged 31.3 points, 7.7 rebounds, 5.4 assists, and 1.4 blocks per game on 53.8/45.1/87.1 shooting split during that 16-game span.
Playing that much and that well after such a debilitating injury is not normal, especially when we’re talking about the Nets. Just this season, fans have witnessed the struggles of players such as Joe Harris, Seth Curry, and Ben Simmons upon their return to action following offseason surgeries. They required load management, minutes restrictions, and, when things weren’t going well production-wise, the utmost patience.
The most recent example is forward T.J. Warren, who missed nearly two entire seasons for Indiana while recovering from surgeries related to stress fractures in his left foot. Warren, a veteran minimum free agent signing this summer, finally made his Nets debut last Friday, scoring 10 points in 17 minutes. He has scored four points in 29 minutes over the next two games since, including a donut during Brooklyn’s 122-116 victory over Charlotte before a rather subdued Barclays Center crowd on Wednesday night.
That was supposed to be a game where Nets Head Coach Jacque Vaughn could start to lessen the burden on his starters, particularly Durant. Kyrie Irving, and Royce O’Neale, who rank fourth, sixth, and 17th, respectively, in the league in minutes played per game this season. Vaughn declared it a pretty high priority in his pregame press conference. When Brooklyn jumped out to a 23-point lead in the second quarter, the plan seemed good to go.
Of course, the shorthanded Hornets made a huge second-half run, and the Nets’ regulars were once again needed to extend themselves in order to save the day. Can’t blame Vaughn—he played to win the game. He utilized just six players in the fourth quarter while Durant was only able to rest less than half a minute more in total than his season average. Warren was not one of the six, having missed his only field goal attempt and travelled in his 11 prior minutes.
To be clear, I’m not at all dissing Warren, who earned a Bubble First-Team All-Star nod for his work after the NBA’s COVID-19 resumption in Orlando three seasons ago. (Has it been that long?) It is obviously going to take time for him to find his rhythm after such a long layoff while on a new team that is dominated by a pair of all-time isolation scorers. What Durant did immediately after his long absence was indeed special and will not be replicated in Warren’s case.
That’s so unfortunate because Warren is, or was, exactly the type of player who could alleviate some of the stress the Nets have been putting on KD. In his last few active seasons in Indiana, Warren showed natural scoring ability, a 50/40/80 shooter. His buckets came about in a variety of ways—catch-and-shoots, pull-ups, floaters, etc.
Other than Durant and Irving, whose minutes alongside bench units at the beginning of the second and fourth quarters this season have been hit-or-miss, the Nets lacked shot creators on Wednesday. Curry is better suited to working off the ball and Cam Thomas has been too much of a hot mess on both ends recently. Oh, and Patty Mills, for some reason, has been persona non grata on game days for the last two weeks.
For those who complain that injuries to Simmons—and reserve forward Yuta Watanabe for that matter—have handicapped Brooklyn’s depth, well, someone is always going to be hurt. That’s the nature of the NBA. Go back and check the injury reports of some of the teams the Nets have beaten during this 8-3 stretch: Portland without Damian Lillard, Memphis without Ja Morant and Desmond Bane, and Toronto (the first time) without their top three starters. Do you think Charlotte missed LaMelo Ball, Gordon Hayward, and, after he left the game in the fourth quarter with an eye injury, P.J. Washington any less than the Nets missed Simmons and Watanabe?
By escaping the Hornets’ sting, the Nets (14-12) have managed to dig themselves out of an opening 2-6 hole to hold the four seed in the muddled middle of the Eastern Conference. They have done so expressly because they have been riding their stars hard. If they had done otherwise, or opt to do otherwise going forward, they will find themselves back in play-in territory, or worse, in short order. Like last season, when the Nets went 8-19 in games Durant missed, this team is overly reliant on their best player.
I know it was unrealistic for me to hope that Warren could regain a high fraction of his old form so he could take some of the scoring load off KD. It’s just that Durant has a knack for making the hard parts of this game, like returning from such a potentially career-altering injury, look so darn easy.
Steve, your conclusion is that the team is overly reliant on Kevin Durant. If he wants to place responsibility at Sean Marks' feet, I sincerely hope he accepts blame and takes fault for why this is the case. Kenny Atkinson had a great system that, if utilized today, would allow every shooter the chance to help him out. He gave away his quality depth and pushed Marks to acquire Harden. He never demanded Sean Marks trade Kyrie Irving when he refused to take the shot. He requested a trade with free agency about to open up.
The only hope is that Jacque Vaughn figures out an offense that allows him to get more out of "The Others." Also, Sean Marks has to figure out how to get Jakob Poeltl AND Mo Bamba. Finally, we need Ben at full strength because him playing Point-Forward is the only hope we have to doing anything significant in the Playoffs