{"id":30804,"date":"2020-05-06T07:42:05","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T11:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonprobasketball.com\/?p=30804"},"modified":"2020-05-06T07:42:05","modified_gmt":"2020-05-06T11:42:05","slug":"brooklyn-nets-exercising-prudence-with-kevin-durant-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2020\/05\/06\/brooklyn-nets-exercising-prudence-with-kevin-durant-injury\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn Nets Exercising Prudence with Kevin Durant Injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprobasketball.com\/nba-teams\/brooklyn-nets\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Brooklyn Nets<\/a> were barely a playoff team and two of their star pickups in <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/d\/duranke01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kevin Durant<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/i\/irvinky01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kyrie Irving<\/a><\/strong> ended the season on the mend. The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprobasketball.com\/2020\/03\/17\/kevin-durant-among-four-brooklyn-nets-players-test-positive-for-coronavirus\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">emergence of COVID-19<\/a> and the eventual regular-season suspension brought fire to the anticipation of Durant\u2019s return to play this season. With the layoff would Durant be able to come back for a playoff run this year?<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Brooklyn Nets Exercising Prudence with Kevin Durant Injury<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><b>Should Kevin Durant Play For the Brooklyn Nets this Year<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to ESPN Nets GM <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/m\/marksse01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sean Marks<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/story\/_\/id\/29138190\/brooklyn-nets-gm-kevin-durant-return-110m-question\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">said<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;I just don&#8217;t know-how coming out of this pandemic will affect anybody, let alone Kevin.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Nets are being cautious with Kevin Durant and his injury. Everybody watching the NBA Finals saw his Achilles pop and it looked pretty bad. The Nets signed Durant to a four-year $164 million contract last summer in hopes he would lead them to a championship.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s a lot of money. With that big of an investment, they have to make sure that he will be 100 percent. Durant also has his own interest in mind. He wants to be one of the best players to ever play the game. While he is already there he has a chance to cement his name in the NBA history books even further. Thinking beyond this year has to be in both party\u2019s interests.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Why the Brooklyn Nets Would Force him Back<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Durant is one of the best players to ever play in the NBA. While it is not a good idea to bring him back for a playoff run it is understandable why the Nets would want him to play.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He is a two-time Finals MVP and a two-time NBA champion. He has made the plays in the playoffs that could guide this inexperienced Nets team to a Finals. Durant\u2019s talent is just too great to keep him on the bench. He is a four-time scoring champ, 10-time All-Star, and nine-time All-NBA.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He is the second-best player in the league so if there is a chance he could play the Nets have to take serious consideration if it would be safe. The risk is too great though.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<br \/>\n<a id=\"gy9HVQ_tQdpuUDCPM8wtrA\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1188990798\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'gy9HVQ_tQdpuUDCPM8wtrA',sig:'6lYuiYP3CuYjwYH-dNZVWrukSbJWOQQdGp0RnWDW5-s=',w:'594px',h:'425px',items:'1188990798',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Brooklyn Nets were barely a playoff team and two of their star pickups in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving ended the season on the mend. The emergence of COVID-19 and the eventual regular-season suspension brought fire to the anticipation of Durant\u2019s return to play this season. With the layoff would Durant be able to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2667,"featured_media":30809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2260,65,231,69,406,96],"class_list":["post-30804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nets","tag-2019-20-nba-season","tag-basketball","tag-brooklyn-nets","tag-kevin-durant","tag-kyrie-irving","tag-nba"],"modified_by":"Tyler Marling","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2667"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}