As a late February Brooklyn Nets practice wrapped up and players began to leave the floor, Kevin Durant hopped off a training table, grabbed a basketball and made his way toward a hoop.
With every shot he drained, any timidity to his steps faded and a familiar assurance took over. Eight months removed from rupturing his Achilles tendon, he wasn't quite ready to be back -- at least not yet.
Durant kept to his rehabilitation routine, oftentimes in a gray beanie, going from his scooter to walking, from walking to running, from running to jumping and from jumping to cutting with a ball in his hands. One of the greatest scorers in NBA history was building himself back up from the very basics.
"If I'd played last year, I would have probably been overwhelmed with just a quick change, switching teams and being in a different environment," Durant told reporters last week. "But I think having a year under my belt definitely helped me coming into this camp because I know the training staff, the coaches and my teammates pretty well now."
The only time Durant spoke to the media during the season was in the days after Kobe Bryant died. Durant's teammate Kyrie Irving considered Bryant a close friend and a mentor. Following a film session two days after Bryant's death, the Nets' public relations staff asked Irving to talk to reporters, but he declined. Instead, Durant said that he would do it, allowing Irving to continue to mourn away from cameras.
Otherwise, Durant was a shadowy figure in the background of the Nets' season, yet his presence loomed. He arrived at most games in Barclays Center less than an hour before tipoff and would walk onto the floor in a sport coat with his team. He was part observer, part coach.
Right before the starting lineups were introduced at those games, Brooklyn's video-screen hype montage concluded by cycling through each player on the roster in rapid succession, from Jarrett Allen to Joe Harris to Irving. The final image: a piercing close-up of Durant staring from the screen down onto the court. He has been eyeing this comeback for more than 550 days.
Now he's back. This is his team to lead with Irving, his friend and co-star. Kevin Durant is no longer the mysterious figure hanging over the Nets' franchise. He's at the very center of their future, and that's where the new questions arise. -- Malika Andrews
Will the injury slow down KD?
Durant's return will be the highest-profile and most important test case yet for how NBA players come back from Achilles tendon ruptures. Although Achilles injuries have become increasingly common, including one suffered by Durant's former Golden State Warriors teammate Klay Thompson in a workout last month, we still have a small sample size of players coming back from them.
On average, players returning from Achilles ruptures perform about 8% worse on a per-minute basis than would have been expected by SCHOENE projections based on their performance over the past three seasons and the development of similar players at the same age.
There's wide variation among the group, however. A handful of players, most notably Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins and San Antonio Spurs veteran Rudy Gay, have actually beaten their pre-injury projections. Others including Dominique's brother, Gerald Wilkins, and All-Star center Mehmet Okur have never come close to regaining their expected form.
The first bit of good news for Durant's return, then, is how good a player he was prior to the injury. When we most recently saw Durant at full strength, during the first two rounds of the 2019 postseason prior to a calf injury, he was making a case as perhaps the NBA's best player with LeBron James watching that year's playoffs from home. Reducing Durant's 2020-21 SCHOENE projection by 8% would leave him virtually equal to Paul George of the LA Clippers, for example.
Durant's skill set is another reason for optimism. It might not be a coincidence that the two biggest post-Achilles rupture success stories were skilled wings with size like Durant's. Dominique Wilkins wasn't the same kind of shooter over the course of his career but posted career highs in both 3-pointers per game (1.7) and 3-point percentage (38%) coming off the injury, when he averaged 29.9 points per game and made his eighth consecutive All-Star appearance.
Even if Durant loses some athleticism because of the combination of aging and the injury, he should be able to transition to playing more power forward (and perhaps even center) in Brooklyn, where his quickness rather than his size could become his biggest advantage. A similarly broad set of skills helped Breanna Stewart of the WNBA's Seattle Storm remain the league's best player after an Achilles rupture cost her the 2019 season. Stewart led the Storm to their second title in three years and was again named Finals MVP.
The key difference between Durant and Stewart is their age. Stewart turned 26 during the season, while Durant is 32 and entering his 13th NBA season. Before the injury, we would have expected Durant to begin gently declining in his 30s. Whether he can avoid additional drop-off after his Achilles rupture will help determine whether the Nets emerge as championship contenders. -- Kevin Pelton
How will the KD-Kyrie partnership work?
Live on Instagram, Kyrie Irving was in full negotiation with Kevin Durant.
Ahead of their first Nets preseason game together, they were discussing the team's offensive system. Irving was focused on how many post-ups he was going to get.
"What about seven post-ups instead of eight?" Irving asked.
"I thought we was going to do 2½ post-ups a game," Durant responded. "The half one is I throw you the ball in the post and you just throw it right back out to me."
Irving tried to explain his mentality. That he feels he has a mismatch no matter who is defending him, no matter the place on the floor. That having a guard who can post up and cook any defender would be good for the Nets' offense.
"Yeah, we gonna see, though," Durant said, humoring Irving.
It was all good-natured, but Durant had a point. He said he didn't think it was good for the continuity of the offense for the point guard to always be underneath the rim.
There's a clear chemistry between Irving and Durant, kindred spirits in the way they think the game and perceive their reputations off the floor. They have a connection they hope manifests into something special on the floor.
Durant has been searching for that kind of partnership his entire career. It has led him to playing with three superstar point guards, all dynamic and different in their own ways.
There were moments -- extended moments -- with Russell Westbrook in Oklahoma City when he and Durant played beautifully off one another, not taking turns but taking over. They stopped downplaying their differences the longer they played together, never shy about the frustrations that came from their strong-willed approaches.
"There are days when I want to just tackle you and tell you to snap out of it sometimes," Durant said in his MVP speech to Westbrook. "I know there's days you want to do the same with me."
The two grew together into superstars, their individual rises sometimes complicating the team dynamic. Durant's easygoing vibe seemed like a good counter to Westbrook's unrelenting stubbornness, but they clashed at times. They both wanted the same thing; they just didn't always agree on how to get there.
Durant's departure from OKC didn't explicitly have to do with Westbrook. But if he wanted to play with Russ, he would've kept playing with Russ.
The Warriors' kinship and togetherness were appealing to Durant and a big selling point in his decision to sign with them. He looked at the Warriors' "strength in numbers" mantra and saw a group devoid of hierarchy, with no talk of who was the Batman and who was the Robin.
In Stephen Curry, Durant saw an accommodating, inclusive star, someone to build a relationship with on equal footing. But there was always an undercurrent of jealousy for Durant. Curry was immune to criticism, free to shoot from 40 feet and adored by the media.
Before he signed with the Warriors, Durant privately complained to friends about the world's infatuation with Curry and the Warriors. Durant longed to be considered the game's best player and was on the heels of LeBron James after winning the MVP in 2014. But Durant essentially lost a season with a broken foot in 2015, coinciding with the Warriors' ascension, and had to watch as Curry leapfrogged him.
That partnership never came with Curry. There was no animosity or bad blood, but an unspoken tension lingered. Durant was the outsider in Curry's domain, the mercenary hired to stack trophies. At least with Westbrook, Durant had a bond. An up-and-down one, but one they built together.
Durant's career has been about change. Changing agents. Changing teams. Changing superstar running mates. The partnership with Irving was a coordinated move, with the two desiring to play together. They're like-minded offensive titans, isolation savants who can get a bucket at will.
Thunder general manager Sam Presti has often said Durant is a true basketball genius. The way he thinks the game and approaches it as a craft, always learning, growing, developing. Durant is as elastic and versatile an offensive player as there has ever been, gifted to score with ruthless efficiency. And within that talent is an ability to adapt to any style, to any teammate. He will get his 25 to 30 points. And he can get it in 25 to 30 different ways.
It won't always be pretty with Irving. There will be turn-taking. There will be images of Durant with his hand up calling for the ball, standing idly by as Irving isolates. There will be moments of frustration where Durant flaps his arms at his side as Irving posts up.
But that doesn't mean anything is wrong. Like their good-natured conversation on IG, that just means they're working on it. -- Royce Young
What will his game look like?
Two stats sum up prime Durant's unprecedented abilities as a scorer in the modern NBA.
Here's the first one: As a 24-year-old in 2012-13, Durant put up 50-40-90 numbers while scoring more than 28 points per game. Only Larry Bird and Stephen Curry can say they've done the same thing. In short, not only does KD get buckets, he gets them at wildly efficient levels.
And here's the second one:
Best midrange shooting seasons
1. Kevin Durant (2018-19): 52.6 FG%
2. Dirk Nowitzki (2013-14): 50.4%
3. Chris Paul (2014-15): 50.4%
4. Kevin Durant (2015-16): 50.3%
5. Kevin Durant (2017-18): 50.1%
*Since 2013-14, among 57 players with 500 non-paint 2s
Durant's gifts are unique. Unlike other top scorers, his shot diet still includes vast amounts of midrange shots, and for good reason -- he's probably the most effective scorer since Michael Jordan in the forgotten areas in between the paint and the 3-point line. While this space has fallen out of favor analytically, the "midrange is dumb" dogma fails to apply here.
Right before he got hurt, Durant had just logged the best midrange scoring season in the player-tracking era. That ability to find and convert his own jumpers anywhere, anytime in the postseason is what made him Golden State's MVP in those Finals games. He can and will use the whole chessboard to great effect. He's unguardable. It's that simple.
Even if Durant takes time to snap back into form, he will still be a problem for every opponent. We might not see him log long stretches of shutdown defense mirroring his 2016 playoff bliss. That's fine. The Nets won't need that version of peak KD until the postseason.
But watch Durant in the midrange in the early months of the season. In his preseason debut against the Washington Wizards on Sunday, KD took 12 shots in 24 minutes. More than half were 2-point jumpers. In the first quarter, Irving tossed his co-star the ball on the left wing. Durant turned to face Rui Hachimura, ripped the ball over his head to his left side and then fired away from 19 feet with a hand in his face. It swished so perfectly that the net got stuck in appreciation.
One hopes he reaches 100% in time, because Kevin Durant at full strength is an incredible sight. But even as he works his way back, those sweet midrange moves will remain undeniable. -- Kirk Goldsberry