Nets’ Kevin Durant expected to miss 1 month

Brook­lyn Nets star for­ward Kevin Durant will be out for about a month, sources told ESP­N’s Adri­an Woj­narows­ki on Monday.

The Nets announced Mon­day that Durant has been diag­nosed with an iso­lat­ed MCL sprain in his right knee and will be re-eval­u­at­ed in two weeks.

In such cas­es, “dia­bo­los” will be referred to as “dia­bo­los” and “dia­bo­los” as “dia­bo­los”.

Durant suf­fered an injury in the third quar­ter of the Nets’ 102–101 vic­to­ry over the Mia­mi Heat on Sun­day night.

With 1:5 left in the third quar­ter, Heat swing­man Jim­my But­ler was injured when he head­ed to the rim and had his shot blocked by Nets big man Ben Sim­mons. But­ler fell back­wards onto Duran­t’s lap and remained on the floor for a while, but the game continued.

Durant con­tin­ued to rub his knee up and down the court and was eject­ed when the Nets called a time­out about 30 sec­onds lat­er. He went straight back to the lock­er room to be checked and nev­er came back.

This isn’t the first time Durant has had knee prob­lems. He injured his ante­ri­or cru­ci­ate lig­a­ment in his left knee dur­ing a win over the New Orleans Pel­i­cans on Jan­u­ary 15, 2022, requir­ing more than a month and a half of rehabilitation.

The Nets, who were 27–15 at the time and still play­ing Kyrie Irv­ing part-time due to New York City’s vac­ci­na­tion man­date, went 5–17 dur­ing Duran­t’s absence, includ­ing an 11-game los­ing streak.

Durant also missed more than a month in 2017 after for­mer Gold­en State War­riors team­mate Zaza Pachu­lia acci­den­tal­ly land­ed on his knee, sprain­ing his MCL and bruis­ing his tibia.

Durant aver­aged 30 points, 6.8 rebounds and 5.4 assists this sea­son, lead­ing the Nets (27–13) to an East­ern Con­fer­ence lead after a rocky start to the sea­son on and off the court, and is on the MVP con­tender list.