Ian Eagle sees pros, cons of Kevin Durant not playing for Nets when play resumes

Stephan A. Smith and Jay Williams have both made clear their stance on whether or not Kevin Durant should play for the Brooklyn Nets in 2019-20 if the season resumes: they don’t think he should suit up.

Their colleague at ESPN, Adrian Wojnarowski, stated on “The Woj Pod” that the Nets “aren’t playing him.”

With Nets general manager Sean Marks recently talking about how good Durant looked throughout his workouts, it would seem a decision has not been made yet on the organization’s part. And given some of the points YES Network Nets play-by-play announcer Ian Eagle brought up when broached with the subject by Chris Grosso during Eagle’s appearance on the “Basic Thoughtonomics” podcast, it’s reasonable to think no decision has been made on the part of Durant or Brooklyn:

Until we see what the mini-training camp looks like, and what the schedule would look like, it’s nearly impossible to say ‘Oh yeah, [Durant and Kyrie Irving] are coming back,’ or ‘these guys aren’t coming back.’ I’ve heard very strong opinions on both ends. To me, I just look at the calendar more than anything else. Kevin Durant suffered his injury in the NBA Finals last year. [A] serious Achilles injury usually takes about 11 months to recover from that and feel yourself again. We are past the 11-month mark, we are very close to the 12-month mark and there has been a lot of video of Kevin Durant working out, doing three-on-threes.

Eagle made clear that Durant may not look like his full-fledged self after having played some three-on-three against teammates, even though some of those players very much liked what they saw from the superstar.

But with the league set to finish 2019-20 well into the summer, 2020-21 would then start much later than normal — Christmas being the projected start date. That adds another layer to the assessment process, as Eagle explained:

I do think that there’s an aspect of this where KD and his people, and the Nets and their medical staff and their training staff, will have to sit down and really weigh the positives and the negatives of coming back.

Positives would be, ‘OK, you’re back on the floor, you’re back in the competitive setting.’ The negatives, potentially, would be ‘is there a risk in any way, shape or form?’ The potential positive is avoiding a longer length of not playing at that level, where … right now, if they resume action, there’s a pretty good chance that they won’t start next season until December. And some are saying maybe not even until Christmas. So, the alternate possibility for KD is that he wouldn’t play until nearly 18 months after his injury. That’s a long time. That’s a long time for an athlete.