Nets GM hints KD could play if season resumes
Nets general manager Sean Marks left the door open slightly for Kevin Durant to return to the court should the NBA season resume after shutting down on March 11 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“That’s a $110 million question,” Marks told Newshub of his native New Zealand. “In all seriousness, we’ve tried not to talk about his timeline a lot.”
The Nets have shed little light on Durant’s progress since the season was put on hold. Marks preached caution and not wanting to push a player to come back if he is not 100 percent ready. But the pandemic has given Durant nearly two additional months of recovery time from surgery to repair the ruptured Achilles tendon he suffered during last June’s NBA Finals. Marks was already seeing improvement in his superstar in waiting.
“I can tell you this though — before the pandemic, he looked like Kevin Durant and that’s a good thing,” Marks said.
Durant was one of four Nets players to test positive for COVID-19 and has since recovered.
“I just don’t know how coming out of this pandemic will affect anybody, let alone Kevin,” Marks said. “When you’ve got enough invested in a player like Kevin, we’re never going to push him to come back.”
The GM’s statements seem more hopeful than what Durant’s manager Rich Kleiman told Sports Illustrated in April. Kleinman hadn’t discussed it with the former MVP, who signed a four-year, $164 million contract with the Nets last summer, because he saw a return this season as “unrealistic.”
“I promise you, Kevin and I have not talked about that. And I know it sounds crazy, but my assumption has been that that wasn’t very realistic,” Kleiman said in April. “It’s just not … I know when the time will be right to have that conversation; but it just hasn’t been that time and it just doesn’t feel like it’s needed.”
When play stopped the Nets were 30-34, in seventh place in the Eastern Conference and in line for a playoff berth.