SIT FOR A BIT
Hammy will keep Durant benched until after break
Two games has turned into more than two weeks.
Nets star Kevin Durant’s “mild” left hamstring strain is more severe than originally expected, and Brooklyn, rightfully so, is playing it safe. A routine follow-up MRI determined Durant requires “an additional recovery period” that will keep him out through the March 5-10 NBA All-Star break.
If this time frame holds, Durant will miss nine regular season games due to this injury, plus the March 7 All-Star Game.
“It sucks to not have Kevin,” Nets head coach Steve Nash said matter-of-factly after practice on Friday. “He’s an amazing, amazing basketball player, and anytime you have the Lamborghini in the garage, it’s meant to be on the road. So, we’re all disappointed.”
The news comes just days after Nash voiced confidence Durant would be able to return before the All-Star break. But the second round of MRI imaging was clearer because there was less bleeding around the injury. The Nets will reassess Durant’s hamstring following the AllStar break, the team said in a statement. There still remains no definite return date for the Nets’ star forward.
The news of Durant’s injury also comes after he already missed two separate sets of games earlier this season due to the NBA’s coronavirus health and safety protocol, including one instance where he rode in a car multiple times in one day without a mask alongside a Nets team staffer that later tested positive for COVID-19. Durant, himself, never tested positive, sparking confusion and frustration for a team that continues to miss its best player.
Durant, in total, will miss 18 of the team’s first 37 games. In the 19 games he’s played, the Nets star has averaged 29 points, seven rebounds and five assists on 52% shooting from the field, and 43% shooting from threepoint range. Durant was voted an Eastern Conference All-Star starter and was the conference’s leading fan vote recipient in his first healthy season after rupturing his Achilles tendon, an injury that cost him the entire 2019-20 season.
“He’s disappointed clearly. He got himself through one of the most devastating injuries in basketball and playing at an All-Star level or even MVP level, and for it to kind of get shut down for a little while is very disappointing for him,” Nash said.
Nash has maintained he does not believe Durant’s injury is long-term, but the Nets star, when all is said and done will have been off the court at least 26 days, provided he plays in
Brooklyn’s first game after the All-Star break against the Celtics on March 11.
Brooklyn’s Big 3 of Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving have only played in six games as a trio, not including the game against the Raptors that Durant was pulled from midgame. The Nets are 5-1 in those games but have not had a big enough sample size against the league’s elite teams to put their superstar tandem to the test.
The Nets have won eight in a row, thanks largely to the Harden trade that has bolstered a backcourt that already featured Irving.
Durant was named Eastern Conference All-Star team captain, hauling in the NBA’s second-most votes behind Lakers’ star LeBron James. NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced Pacers star Domantas Sabonis as Durant’s injury replacement.
The league has not yet made a decision whether the All-Star team will still be named Team Durant, or whether Durant will still draft his team for this year’s All-Star Game. Giannis Antetokounmpo was the East’s second-highest All-Star vote-getter, and Durant’s teammate Kyrie Irving was also named an All-Star starter.
Kelly Loeffler is officially no longer a co-owner of the Atlanta Dream.
“Today does mark a new beginning for the Atlanta Dream,” Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said after the league’s board of governors approved the sale of the team from Loeffler and Mary Brock to former Dream star Renee Montgomery and Northland real estate’s Larry Gottesdiener and Suzanne Abair.
The move came more than six months after the Dream and other teams around the league started calling for the then Georgia senator to sell her share of the team. Those calls started after Loeffler’s “mob rule” comments in reference to armed Black Lives Matter protesters. That was the last straw for the players, who called on Engelbert to force Loeffler to drop her ownership share. After Engelbert said she would not, the players started campaigning for Loeffler’s political competitor.
“Last year, 2020, the players of the Dream refused to just shut up and dribble,” new majority owner Gottesdiener said. “They found their collective voice. We’re inspired by these brave women who navigated sports and activism in the midst of the pandemic and we want to celebrate and honor them. We’re particularly proud to be stewards of this team in this city.”
In the past two months, Loeffler, who aligned herself closely to the Trump administration, lost her Senate seat, and now her ownership stake in a WNBA team. And it was the players of the Dream that sparked the movements that caused Loeffler’s ouster in both spaces.
“May (the sale) send a strong reminder that the players of the W are bigger than basketball, and that together they stand for equity, justice, diversity, inclusion, fairness and respect,” Players Association executive director Terri Jackson said in a statement on behalf of the union.
The Dream’s future seems to be in better hands now, with an ownership group that includes a former player. Montgomery is the first former player to become both an owner and an executive of a WNBA team.
Montgomery, 34, opted out of the W’s 2020 bubble season at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., in order to focus her attention and time to fighting for social justice in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Her work, which led her to the More Than A Vote organization, a collaboration of Black athletes and artists who now are “combating systemic, racist voter suppression by educating, energizing, and protecting our community.” The organization has 56 members, including A’ja Wilson, LeBron James and Lisa Leslie.
Montgomery, the minority owner of the group, said she didn’t approach the idea of being a top executive of the Dream in response to Loeffler’s behavior over the summer.
“For me it wasn’t necessarily about a rectification of the situation,” she said. “It was my excitement of what could I do… I understand kind of how the media works, and I see things a little bit differently in that aspect and so I started to just kind of let my mind wander and think about what can I bring to the table.”
The seeds of being a potential owner of a WNBA team were planted in her head during a casual conversation with Diana Taurasi in Chicago during NBA All-Star weekend.
“You don’t wanna be an owner? (Ownership) is where the real decisions are made,” Montgomery recalled Taurasi saying.
It wasn’t until October after she opted out that the opportunity to hold a stake in the Dream presented itself to Montgomery and she jumped on it, joining Gottesdiener and Abair after being connected to the pair via More Than A Vote and Engelbert.
Engelbert told Montgomery current players were not eligible to be part of ownership groups in the league. So, in a bittersweet decision, Montgomery quit the game for something bigger than her.
“It is our fervent wish that we shall never see again such an abuse of power and arrogant display of privilege,” Jackson’s statement said.