Kevin Durant has been an injury magnet, especially in recent years.
The Brooklyn Nets star just played his first game with the team in December 2020 despite signing with the team in July 2019 as a free agent. The team knew it was onboarding an injured Durant, who was recovering from an Achilles injury he sustained in Game 5 of the 2019 NBA finals.
But Durant’s injury problems have not stopped there. He missed more time this season, including the All-Star Game, with a hamstring injury.
Durant finally returned to the court April 7 following the most recent injury but left the game with what the Nets have deemed a left thigh contusion.
Kyrie Irving admitted Durant’s inability to remain healthy has had an impact on the team’s success as a whole.
“It’s just, the timing of everything this season, this year, is just … a sign of what life is right now in terms of the uncertainty of a lot going on,” Irving told reporters Sunday during his postgame video press conference, via SNYTV. “Anything can happen (at) any moment, so you don’t want to take anything for granted. But anytime one of our teammates goes down, anytime something like that happens, it’s definitely going to take a hit for us. And he’d just gotten back. So, we just pray that it’s not too serious and he’s able to recover.
“But it definitely has a hit on our continuity at times. But we don’t want to make any excuses for each other. We’re all professionals. Guys that are getting minutes right now, we need them. So it’s going to turn eventually. But we’ve just got to kind of find that continuity, that connectivity from the start to the end of the game.”
The Nets sit comfortably in second place among Eastern Conference teams, but that does not make losing Durant any less ideal. The playoffs are coming up after all, and the team will need as many healthy bodies as possible to compete with some of the talent spanning the conference.
Durant has played in just 23 of the Nets 75 games this season.
