The Brooklyn Nets may have come away with a victory Sunday night, but they could now be without perennial All-Star Kevin Durant for the next month.
Sources indicate that the Nets forward suffered an MCL injury to his right knee in the 3rd quarter of his team’s recent 102-101 victory over the Miami Heat.
Durant missed 6 weeks last January with a sprained MCL in his left knee last season, however initial examinations lead the club to believe this injury is less severe.
Nevertheless, the club remembers all too well their 2nd half demise after KD went down in 2021-22. Brooklyn, who were 27-15 at the time of the former league MVP’s injury, went 5-17 in his absence as they plummeted down the Eastern Conference standings.
The Nets are currently 27-13 and sit just a game back of the conference leading Boston Celtics. 9-1 in their last 10 contests, Brooklyn is hoping that Durant’s absence falls on the shorter end of the 4 week timeline that it’s believed he’ll be out for.
This time around however the team will have the services of Ben Simmons and Kyrie Irving to lean on, the latter of which was a part time player due to his vaccination status last season.
Prior to going down with the injury, Durant was enjoying an MVP-esque campaign averaging 29.7pts/5.3ast/6.7reb per game while shooting 55.9% from the field. In his last 6 full games, the 34 year old posted point totals of 32, 26, 23, 25, 44, and 33pts respectively, while accumulating double-doubles in half those contests.
With Durant out, Yuta Watanabe, Joe Harris, and Seth Curry are amongst the options to join the Nets starting rotation in the interim.
Brooklyn is next in action on January 12th vs. the Boston Celtics.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @JKyleSkinner
Photo: Cyrus Saatsaz. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.