With rampant speculation that the NBA is going to return to play by August, what are the pros and cons to a return of Brooklyn Nets forward Kevin Durant?
It’s been nearly a year since Brooklyn Nets forward Kevin Durant went down with that gruesome right Achilles injury in the NBA Finals, and with the 2019-20 season currently on pause, that has left the door open for Durant to perhaps play this season after all.
Ian Eagle shed some light into how the potential makeup of the calendar could play into Durant’s decision to return to action.
Eagle notably said that it takes about 11 months for a player to recover and feel themselves again following an Achillies tear like that.
As recently as March, KD was seen dunking again in practice and looking like his old self.
https://twitter.com/ChrisLavinio/status/1237469930997645318?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1237469930997645318%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Felitesportsny.com%2F2020%2F03%2F10%2Fbrooklyn-nets-video-kevin-durant-throws-down-dunk-in-practice%2F
Now that he’s had even more time to recover, should Durant play in Orlando?
In a much more normal universe, the NBA season would still be going on with the Conference Finals in full swing, and the Nets would almost certainly be in offseason mode while Durant didn’t log a minute for them this season.
However, that’s not the case. A return to action at Walt Disney World without fans is being constantly discussed, and that is likely to occur in July or August.
In that case, it’ll be 13-14 months since Durant went down with that injury; well past the timeframe that Eagle talked about.
Theoretically, that should allow Durant to go out there ready to play and give the Nets a chance to compete for a championship in a revised format, but with training facilities shut down for the vast majority of the last couple of months, that is sure to have had some sort of hindrance to KD’s rehab progress.
However, NBA training facilities including Brooklyn’s are now open, but players will have to follow safety protocols. There will also be some sort of training camp for players for them to tune themselves back up for game action.
With the return of the season also about two or three months away, that should give Durant plenty of time to continue rehabbing and focus on getting ready to play in a real game.
Returning to game action does require playing 5-on-5 though, and with the coronavirus being a factor, that type of scrimmaging is still not allowed. Playing in games is also completely different than scrimmages, as players will have to deal with contact, run up and down the floor with full intensity, and be ready to twist and contort their bodies in many different directions.
If Durant didn’t get to rehab his injury properly, then that type of toll on his body could end up aggravating his injury in some capacity. There are more concerns about Durant coming back this season, as I touched upon in this article.
On the flip side, if Durant played it safer, then he could be looking at a return to action in December, which would be 18 months after his injury. 18 months is a very long time for an athlete to sit out, and there does come the worry of him becoming rusty.
He could also lose out on the opportunity to regain his competitive edge, especially if the NBA does away with conference seeding this postseason, which would give him an opportunity to go up against LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers.
In this scenario, Durant could also be playing in an environment where he might be more at ease, which would be away from the media and fans.
It could very well be a utopia for KD, as all he’d have to worry about is playing basketball for 48 minutes and trying to prove to people that he is a better basketball player than LeBron James without any outside forces disrupting him. He would be super locked-in, and that would be VERY fun to watch.
The bottom line is that Kevin Durant will come back when he feels like he’s ready to and if the time is now, great. If not, then he shouldn’t be blamed for it, and we’ll all wait for his Brooklyn Nets debut at the start of the 2020-21 season.