Kevin Durant certainly will return to the Nets’ starting lineup at some point, possibly even Tuesday night against the Raptors in Tampa.
The 11-time All-Star — and newly minted Oscar winner — began his momentous day Sunday coming off the bench in the Nets’ home win over the Suns. He played 20 out of 24 minutes in the second half and finished with 33 points after missing 26 of the previous 31 games with hamstring and thigh injuries.
“I think we’ll monitor it and we’ll see if we start him next game or not. But that’s the type of thing that we want to just continue to have the flexibility to decide game-to-game what’s the best output for him, and what’s the best order of the output,” Nets coach Steve Nash said after Sunday’s win improved the Nets’ record to 41-20, tops in the Eastern Conference.
“We just made sure that, although he’d load up in the second half of minutes, he would have plenty of breaks. He’d come out of the game with a break, you’d have the quarter break and have timeouts. So he came out twice and had a quarter break in between. So we just tried to manage it that way.”
Veteran teammate Blake Griffin marveled Sunday at Durant’s ability to step back into the lineup and efficiently bury 12 of 21 shots following his latest injury layoff.
But Durant, an executive producer on the Oscar-winning live-action short film “Two Distant Strangers,” said his on-court return felt natural despite coming off the bench for only the third time (all this season) in 874 career NBA games.
“It’s like riding a bike. You get your footing right, you get your rhythm, and I think my teammates did a great job of looking for me all game, and I just wanted to resort back to that work that I put in,” Durant said. “The shots that I take in practice and shootaround, try to get to those as much as possible to gain my rhythm, and I started to get a little bit more creative as the game progressed.
“It was a good start. Hopefully I build on this game and keep going.”
Still, with James Harden not close to returning from his own hamstring woes, the Nets have played a grand total of seven of their 61 games with their Big 3 in the lineup concurrently.
Kyrie Irving also was efficient Sunday with 34 points on 10-for-19 shooting after enduring a rough night from the field (4-for-19) in Friday’s win over the Celtics.
“I think it’s more normal that they’re efficient like that, than otherwise,” Nash said of Irving and Durant. “I think Kevin’s shown that his scoring doesn’t seem to get affected by a long layoff whether it was coming off the [2019] Achilles [surgery] or coming off the hamstring, he seems to come right back in and his rhythm and timing are excellent. … It’s very impressive, for sure. I don’t want to diminish how special they are. But, it’s more the norm than I think than extraordinary.”
With 11 games and less than four weeks to go before the playoffs commence on May 22, managing Durant’s minutes and maintaining his health will be paramount for Nash and the Nets’ performance team.
The remaining schedule features three sets of back-to-back games, including Thursday in Indiana and Friday at home against Portland. Nash expects to continue not playing the 32-year-old Durant in both ends on consecutive days.
“You know when he’s sitting out it’s just killing him,” Griffin said Sunday. “Just to see that joy of being able to play basketball again is fun for us.”