Kevin Durant returned to practice on Thursday, in time to rejoin the Brooklyn Nets for the five-game road trip that tips off Saturday with a return to Golden State for Durant.
“Kevin was with us today, practiced and is ready to go,” said Nets coach Steve Nash. “The guy loves basketball and he missed it, we missed him. So it’s a happy family again.”
Durant missed Brooklyn’s last three games due to COVID health and safety protocols, and was limited to 19 minutes in the game prior to that against Toronto last Friday when he was held out of the start of the game, entered in the first quarter, and then removed in the third due to contact tracing protocols.
He’s back in time for Brooklyn’s only visit to face the Warriors this season. Durant missed all of last season after suffering an Achilles’ injury in Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals in Toronto while with the Warriors.
In his three seasons with Golden State, Durant won two NBA titles and two NBA Finals MVP awards, earning All-NBA selections — two Second Team, one First Team — as he has in each of the last nine full seasons that he has played.
“Going back to Golden State, I’m looking forward to playing again and being out there with the team and building some chemistry,” said Durant. “That’s my main focus. I had some great years in Golden State. I look forward to being back in the Bay Area, but it’s a shame the fans won’t be there.”
Durant’s return will bring Brooklyn’s big three back together. In the 14 games the Nets have played since acquiring James Harden; Durant, Harden, and Kyrie Irving have only played five full games together, plus the interrupted Toronto game. Brooklyn has won four of those games, averaging 123.4 points.
The two health and safety protocol issues that have cost Durant six games have been the only blips in his return from injury. In 18 games, he’s averaging 29.5 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 5.2 assists per game, shooting 52.9 percent overall, 44.9 percent from 3-point range, and 87.2 percent from the line.
“He has met every expectation at least,” said Nash. “I think I have had the luxury of seeing him a bunch of times through this process, so I kind of had a glimpse as to how good he looked and I knew how hard he was working and the preparation he put in. Typically, you wouldn’t expect him to play at this level, especially this early, but we’ve seen it. We’ve seen him in offseason and training camp.
“So we expected this in a sense, but that shouldn’t take away from how astonishing it is that he’s able to come back from that type of injury and be the player that he always was with the explosiveness and dexterity at his size and the incredible accuracy with his shotmaking. When you can shoot, you can shoot, but the way he plays off the move at his size to be able to be that accurate, that can be very difficult if you’re not really healthy. So it’s a tribute to all the work he put in and how well he’s done to get physically back to where he belongs in that he’s this accurate with the basketball. It shows his body is feeling strong and he’s done all the hard work.”
JORDAN OUT ON SATURDAY
Steve Nash said center DeAndre Jordan would miss Saturday’s game for personal reasons, but that he expected him back during Brooklyn’s five-game road trip. Frontcourt depth has been an issue for Brooklyn since Jarrett Allen and Taurean Prince were included in the James Harden trade, and they’ve increasingly been playing smaller with 6-foot-8 Jeff Green at center.
Brooklyn has recently added center Norvel Pelle and forward Noah Vonleh, but their playing time has been limited. Meanwhile, Golden State is without its regular center, with 7-foot rookie James Wiseman sidelined due to a sprained wrist.
“The Warriors game is a team that’s playing extremely small right now with all their true centers out,” said Nash. “So I don’t want to say it’s fortuitous, because they’re such a difficult team to defend anyways, but it might have been a tough matchup for a traditional center anyways. But hopefully DJ will be back in relatively short order and we can keep building.”
ALL-STAR VOTING
Kevin Durant continues to lead all Eastern Conference players in the fan voting for the All-Star Game, with the second set of updated results released this week. Durant has received 4,234,433 votes, second only to LeBron James overall. Kyrie Irving is second among Eastern Conference guards (2,104,130), with James Harden third (1,829,504).
ABOUT THE WARRIORS
The Nets beat the Warriors 125-99 in their previous meeting on opening night at Barclays Center. After dropping its first two games, Golden State won four of five and is currently 14-12 and in eighth place in the Western Conference. Steph Curry is second in the NBA with 30.0 points per game, leading the league 131 3-pointers made while shooting 43.5 percent from 3-point range. Curry also averages 5.9 assists, 5.5 rebounds, and 1.3 steals per game. The Warriors are without rookie center James Wiseman, who is averaging 12.2 points on 50.3 percent shooting and 6.1 rebounds, but has been sidelined with a sprained wrist. Wiseman’s absence is an issue for Golden State’s rebounding, in which the Warriors are 28th in the league in rebound percentage (47.9). While they don’t get anything off the offensive boards, he Warriors are actually fifth in the NBA in defensive rebounds per game (36.0) but 26th in defensive rebounding percentage (71.8). With the league’s No. 2 field goal percentage defense — opponents have shot 43.6 percent — and the league’s second-fastest pace (103.46), the Warriors force a high volume of misses. But they also give up a lot of offensive rebounds (11.3 per game, 30th) and second chance points (14.2 per game, 27th). Overall, the Warriors are seventh in defensive efficiency (108.9).