Nets star Kevin Durant missed his first game of the season Friday night, sitting out against Orlando with a right shoulder sprain.
Durant has been favoring the shoulder since Monday Nov. 8, first injuring it in the Nets’ 118-95 loss in Chicago. It was their only defeat on a season-long 5-1 road swing. He’d played through it, managing it and simply getting treatment.
Until now, sitting out Friday against the last-place Magic. He’s not expected to miss any more games, the Nets taking advantage of not playing again until Monday.
“I just think it’s just been bugging him a little bit and finding a time for him to rest is difficult,” coach Steve Nash said before the Nets’ 115-113 win over the Magic.
“So coming out of a back-to-back, the shoulder lingering a little and him having a four-day break here in a sense for the shoulder is just an opportunity we thought was positive four us. Unfortunately, for [one night], it hurts the team, but in the long run it could help us. Those are the decisions you have to make.”
With All-Star guard Kyrie Irving not having played a second so far this season, the Nets have struggled offensively when either Durant or James Harden takes a breather during games. Friday marks the first time this season they’ll have to play an entire game without one of them.
The Nets’ 109.7 Offensive Rating with Durant on the floor drops to a pedestrian 105.2 when he sits, the equivalent of plummeting from eight in the league to 22nd.
When asked if Durant had any imaging done on the shoulder, and was expected back for Monday’s game at Cleveland, he said he presumed his star would be back in the lineup against the Cavaliers.
“Umm, I can’t remember about the imaging. There may have been imaging originally, but not [Friday] or [Thursday],” said Nash. “So I let me put it in this context: We don’t feel concerned that it’ll linger or that he’d miss the next game.
“It’s just a pocket in the season where it’s not like he sits tonight and plays tomorrow or Sunday. He actually gets a few days rest on top of rest of the shoulder, and so there was multiple factors that I think made it attractive for us to choose this game for him to sit.”
Right now Durant is averaging 34.7 minutes, his most since 2015-16, back when he was just 27-years-old with a pair of good Achilles tendons.
After being spared at every opportunity last season — essentially given a year-and-a-half to recover from his June 2019 ruptured Achilles, then playing both ends of just two of the Nets’ 11 back-to-backs — Durant has already been used in all three such instances so far this season.
Durant came into Friday tenth in the league in minutes logged with 555. But Nash professed confidence his 33-year-old star wasn’t getting worn down from use.
“Not really,” said Nash. “I think we always are careful there. But we’ve had a few games recently where he didn’t play in the fourth quarter. So I think we’ve saved some minutes here and there. The shoulder, it’s not something we wanted to linger. So I think that was an opportunity we took.”
Coming into Friday, Durant was second in the league in scoring at 28.6 points, while adding a team-high 7.9 rebounds and 4.9 assists.
Despite the shoulder injury, Durant has been staggeringly effective.
Through that loss in Chicago where he first injured the shoulder, Durant averaged 29.5 points on .567 percent shooting overall, .382 from behind the arc and .826 from the free throw line. But in his five appearances since, he’d actually gotten even more efficient.
Durant averaged 26.6 points since the Bulls loss, his shooting splits (.568/.550/.882) improving across the board.