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No matter what they do, the Brooklyn Nets cannot keep their three stars aligned.
The ill-fated title hopefuls endured their latest setback Saturday, when Kevin Durant suffered a sprained medial collateral ligament in his left knee during an unfortunate chain reaction. New Orleans Pelicans forward Herb Jones drove hard in transition and bumped Nets guard Bruce Brown, who then careened into a backpedaling Durant, whose left leg bent the wrong way upon impact. The 2014 MVP grimaced and walked unsteadily to the sidelines, where he will probably remain until after the NBA’s All-Star Weekend in mid-February.
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“No one wants to see that,” Nets Coach Steve Nash said.
It was a fluky injury on a routine fast break during a lopsided game, yet another round of the terrible luck that has marked Durant’s tenure in Brooklyn. Player and team are used to the familiar consequences by now.
For the second straight year, Durant could be selected as an All-Star Game captain yet be unable to compete due to injury. To make matters worse, his MVP chances are probably kaput, even though he has averaged a league-leading 29.3 points per game and carried the Nets through Kyrie Irving’s vaccine misadventures and James Harden’s slow start. And with only a two-game lead over the East’s sixth seed, No. 3 Brooklyn (27-16) could easily tumble from its current perch.
There’s a chance that this injury proves to be a blessing in disguise for the 33-year-old forward, who spent his condensed offseason leading USA Basketball to Olympic gold and returned to carry the shorthanded Nets through a slew of coronavirus-related absences. Although Brooklyn reversed course last month by allowing the unvaccinated Irving to help pick up the slack, Nash acknowledged that his team still looked “gassed” during a recent back-to-back.
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Too much responsibility has fallen on Durant, who is playing more minutes (36.5) and taking more shots (20.3) than he has since the 2013-14 season. Instead of serving as a check against Durant’s potential exhaustion, Nash has adopted a deferential posture toward his stars and has been unable to avoid leaning on them. The second-year coach admitted in mid-December that Durant’s burden “doesn’t feel right,” but nothing changed. After playing Durant 43 minutes and 41 minutes on consecutive nights last week, Nash reiterated that it was “hard to limit [Durant’s] minutes … from a competitive standpoint.”
Nash will now be stuck without his franchise player for the foreseeable future, but the timing and circumstances could be worse. Irving, who missed the first 35 games of the season, is available for road games, and eight of Brooklyn’s next 10 games are away from Barclays Center. That stretch should provide Irving with a nice runway to rekindle his backcourt partnership with Harden, who has turned it up after an unsightly opening month to average 23.9 points, 7.4 rebounds and 10.8 assists per game in January.
Brooklyn was an impressive 25-12 without Durant last season, largely because Harden played at an MVP level while holding down the fort. That experience, which allowed Durant to bounce back from a hamstring injury to reach top form by the playoffs, provides a blueprint for this season. Even if Durant remains out until the end of February, he should have at least six weeks to repeat the ramp-up process.
Still, only so much optimism can be mustered when lineup stability is this elusive. Durant sounded thrilled and relieved upon Irving’s return, declaring that “the game of basketball is happy to have him back.” Brooklyn’s “Big Three” proceeded to take apart the Chicago Bulls in a nationally televised blowout on Wednesday, with Durant pouring in 27 points in 30 minutes and Harden tossing between-the-legs assists to humble the East’s top seed. For a night, the Nets’ all-in bet on top-end talent looked as savvy as ever.
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But the “scary hours” — Harden’s pet phrase for Brooklyn’s steamrolling capabilities — proved fleeting, a recurring theme over the past two seasons. Durant, Harden and Irving have appeared together in only 10 out of a possible 101 regular season games since Harden’s arrival last January, and they probably won’t get 10 more games together before the playoffs due to Durant’s injury and Irving’s part-time availability. The trio’s mesmerizing moments have been overshadowed by countless missed connections, including untimely injuries to Irving and Harden during Brooklyn’s second-round playoff collapse against the Milwaukee Bucks.
The Nets learned a painful lesson in that series: There is a big difference between weathering a midseason crisis and developing the chemistry and continuity needed to sustain a title run. Here they go again.
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