Will Kevin Durant Play if NBA Season Resumes? Agent Says It “Seems Unrealistic”

News broke over the weekend suggesting that Kevin Durant might return to the Brooklyn Nets if the NBA is able to resume its season. The source was Nets GM Sean Marks, who spoke to Newshub in New Zealand and didn’t totally rule out the idea.

So might it happen?

‘That still seems like something that is unrealistic,’ Durant’s agent, Rich Kleiman, told this reporter while discussing his latest venture, a sports business newsletter for fans called TheBoardroom.tv.

‘I haven’t talked to Kevin in depth about anything like that because there remains so much uncertainty about the season in general,’ Kleiman said.

Durant has yet to play in a game for the Nets, and he wasn’t initially expected to suit up for Brooklyn until the 2020-21 season after he ruptured his Achilles tendon as a member of the Golden State Warriors during the 2019 NBA Finals.

However, the indefinite suspension of the ’19-20 season, and the fact that if the season eventually resumes the playoff will happen much later than originally scheduled, has opened up new possibilities.

Might Durant play?

‘That’s a $110 million question,’ Marks said. ‘In all seriousness, we’ve tried not to talk about his timeline a lot… He knows his body better than anybody. Our performance team and training staff have done a tremendous job getting him to this point, but I just don’t know how coming out of this pandemic will affect anybody, let alone Kevin.’ 

In the interview with Newshub, Marks emphasized the fact that the 31-year-old Durant is a long-term investment, and thus the team certainly wouldn’t rush him back under any scenario. 

‘When you’ve got enough invested in a player like Kevin, we’re never going to push him to come back,” Marks said. “When the timing is right, he’ll be 100 percent when he gets on the court.. I can tell you this though – before the pandemic, he looked like Kevin Durant and that’s a good thing.’

When the NBA season was suspended, Brooklyn was in seventh place in the Eastern Conference, 1 1/2 games ahead of the Orlando Magic. Kyrie Irving underwent was was called “season-ending” shoulder surgery, and coach Kenny Atkinson was fired and was replaced by Jacque Vaughn shortly before the season was suspended.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver continues to look at any and all possibilities for resuming the season, with a “bubble concept — possibly in Las Vegas, possibly at Disney World — seeming to make the most sense.

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But one thing that everyone surrounding the NBA seems to agree on is that the coronavirus-related picture takes different twists and turns on almost a daily basis, and the next date — for now — that something might evolve is May 8, when teams may be allowed to let players use their practice facilities.

Then again, that was supposed to happen on May 1, but protests from teams in cities that have been impacted hardest by coronavirus forced a one-week pushback.

Still, with Silver so dead-set on resuming and completing the season, the possibility of Durant suiting up for the Nets cannot be discounted. Moreover, they could conceivable play with a lineup that would also including Irving, Caris LaVert and Joe Harris, who is fully recovered from an ankle he injured on March 11.

‘I would say I’m a strategic optimist,’ Marks told Newshub. ‘I look at the various pathways and avenues this can go, but at the end of the day, I want to believe in humanity, first and foremost.

‘I’m going to prepare that we’re going to play, I’m going to prepare that we have a draft, that we have free agency and so forth, because not preparing could lead you down a rabbit hole.’

Seven members of the Nets organization, including Durant, tested positive for coronavirus. Kleiman would not disclose Durant’s whereabouts but said he was in good shape and working out.