How will the Thunder fare without Durant?

MANILA, Philippines – Kevin Durant was serious, after all. 

After the league’s reigning MVP pulled out of the eventual champion US team’s FIBA World Cup campaign in Spain last August, we wondered if it were something else that made him quit a team earlier perceived incapable of winning without him.

Speculations, after all, were rife that his abortive transfer to Under Armour from Nike – which eventually netted him a record $300 million deal from the latter to stay with the Portland-based shoe firm – was what kept him from serving as leader to the American team.

It doesn’t look like it anymore. Durant, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s top gun and meal ticket, has a fractured right foot and will likely undergo surgery, keeping him out of the courts for about two months. There was no specific incident that caused the injury, it does seem, and if that is the case, this could only be attributed to nothing but wear and tear, further buttressing Durant’s claim when he quit Team USA that he was fatigued both physically and mentally (well, the latter could have something to do with that shoe contract negotiation, too).

But Durant’s alarming injury (to the Thunder, at least) – described as a “Jones fracture” or a broken bone at the base of the small toe – happened over time, or was a result of an accumulation of the wear and tear and the pounding to which Durant’s body has been subjected to, having been the league’s most utilized player over the past seven seasons, or since he entered the league as the second overall selection in 2007 only behind Greg Oden (who?).

Over that span, the 6-foot-9 super-forward, the league’s leading scorer four years out of those seven, has played a league-high total of 20,717 minutes. Durant’s 15,064 minutes, 388 games and 11,356 points over the past five regular seasons –during which he missed only six total games – ranks first in the NBA, surpassing LeBron James’ total minutes by 930. The Texas alumnus has done this by logging at least 3,000 minutes in four of the past five campaigns, excluding that lockout-shortened 2011-12 season, where a total of just 66 games was played.    

Notwithstanding that supposed break, Durant for that year still averaged a number similar to what he has the past two seasons – 38.6 minutes. Fact is, Durant has never averaged less than 38.5 minutes since his rookie year in 2007-08, and, more amazingly, has never averaged less than 41.9 minutes over the past four years in the playoffs.

Last year alone, Durant led all players in the league in total minutes played both in the regular season (3,122) and the playoffs (815). It was the third time in the past five seasons that the seven-year veteran led the NBA in that department, trumping by one year the number of times LeBron James (twice), Dwyane Wade, Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki and Carmelo Anthony have done that altogether.

Nobody has also logged more combined regular-season and playoff minutes over the past three seasons than Durant, not even James who advanced to the NBA finals in all those years. Durant, who just turned 26 last September 29, has a total of 10,924 minutes played over that period to the 29-year-old James’ second-running 10,811.

Indeed, those numbers are amazing even for a franchise player like Durant, and, as we were saying last August, it’s inevitable that they have to catch up with him at some point.  

“Because it’s a stress injury, it happened over time,” Thunder GM Sam Presti said. “The fact that Kevin mentioned it when he did is a real fortunate piece of this because if he had continued to play on it, it would continue to get worse. So, that it was identified when it was identified and that the pain or achiness was enough to mention it is a positive.”

Durant had played in the Thunder’s first two preseason games, logging 18 minutes and scoring 12 points in a 118-109 victory that Dirk Nowitzki sat out in Dallas last October 10. But in practice two days later, he informed the team’s medical staff he was experiencing an “aching” in his right foot.

“We’re really fortunate that we’re catching it when we’re catching it,” Presti said with relief. “We are very fortunate that Kevin notified us yesterday and that we’re catching it on the front end, before this became more of an acute issue.”

The injury isn’t as bad as the one suffered by then-Boston superstar Larry Bird in 1988, when both Bird’s heels had bone spurs to force surgery and keep him out of all but six games of the entire season, nor as debilitating as the young Michael Jordan’s broken bone in his left foot in 1985 that forced him to miss 64 games. But it could prove to be as debilitating to the Thunder as Bird’s and Jordan’s injuries were to the Celtics, whose championship window was starting to narrow, and the Bulls, who were still starting to ascend the ranks of NBA contenders anyway.

There’s no question that in the ultra-competitive Western Conference, Durant’s absence, even if it were just one or two months, could turn out to be a big blow to the Thunder’s regular-season record and thus playoff seeding in the conference. The difference between the second and fifth seeds in the West last year, for example, was just five games, and assuming that Durant misses eight weeks, that means an absence of some 15 games, easily big enough to cause that kind of a swing.

The heavy load on Durant, who averaged a career-best 32 points, 7.4 rebounds and a career-high 5.5 assists in 81 games last season, has actually been a point of concern for OKC’s braintrust. Even before this injury, Presti said there had been discussions of cutting down Durant’s minutes this season.

“I think that’s certainly something that’s been talked about internally,” Presti said. “Hard to say exactly if that will change, but we were already accounting for that, regardless. Whether or not there will be a significant change in that, that will be up to the medical department in terms of how we get him back on the floor and when and at what loads.”

Durant’s fracture is actually something that can conceivably be played on, had it been, for example, in the middle of the playoffs or a crucial stage of the postseason, maybe the finals if the Thunder get back there again for the first time since 2012.  

But that would certainly risk more serious, long-term damage, and one just has to look at Kobe Bryant last year to realize that risking long-term prospects for immediate gratification could be unwise (that of course discounts the fact that Bryant was already 35). Bryant, after tearing an Achilles tendon the previous season, tried to get back quickly last year despite barely one month of practice and suffered another injury, this time a fracture in his left knee. He would not get back again after having played just six games.

“He (Durant) could be playing on it today, but he’d be doing further damage to it, and eventually, we’d have more of an issue,” Presti said. “So we need to be in position where we’re thinking long term, and the long term includes the short term. I think that’s important to recognize.”

As mentioned, Durant has been playing heavy minutes for OKC through the years. But he was forced to carry an even heavier load last season as his chief spear-carrier, Russell Westbrook, missed 36 games because of a lingering injury coming from a torn meniscus in his right knee, which required three surgeries. During Westbrook’s absence, Durant scored at least 25 points through 41 straight games, including 12 straight games in which he scored 30 points or more, one in which he fired a career-high 54, and four more in which he scored from 41-48 points. He carried OKC to a 20-7 record from late December to the All-Star break while Westbrook was out, averaging 35 points and 6.3 assists in that stretch. It was not surprising that Durant’s heroic job earned him the league’s MVP award.

(RELATED: The Russell Westbrook Experience)

Now the role has been reversed. The 6-3 Westbrook this time has to compensate for Durant’s absence, and it’s uncharted territory for him and OKC. The 25-year-old guard from UCLA has played only five games without Durant over the past five seasons, averaging 26.7 points (on 22.5 floor attempts) and 7.0 assists.

But Presti said the Thunder will try to compensate for Durant’s loss collectively, although the bulk of the burden will definitely fall on Westbrook.

“In regard to replacing a player like Kevin Durant, you don’t replace Kevin Durant. It’s not going to be one person. It’s going to be a collective mindset,” Presti said. “We know we’re a better basketball team with Kevin Durant on the floor. But we can have some influence on how good we are in the meantime.  We’re certainly not going to be looking at the calendar, waiting for him to get back. I don’t think he’d want us to do that.”

Thunder coach Scott Brooks could only agree. “One of the things I’m smart enough to realize is we’re not going to replace Kevin’s offensive efficiency, his scoring, his playmaking, his defense,” Brooks said.  “But what we can do as a group is get better, so that when he does come back, when he’s ready to come back, we can be a better team.”

Westbrook, for his part, said that his role on the club will not be any different, despite realizing he will be called upon to lead this team with its prime option out. “It’s not about me. It’s about our team. I can’t win games by myself. I can’t do anything by myself,” Westbrook said. “I kind of want to take the attention off me and put it more on the team. Everybody keeps asking what I’m going to do and how I’m going to change. I think it’s more about our team and what we can do.”

“We’re not asking Russell to be a 35-point scorer,” Brooks concurred. “Obviously, he’s going to be a scorer because he can, and he does that at a high level. There will be games he might have 20, there will be games he’ll have 30, but there will also be some games where he has 15. He just has to continue to lead like he has been and that’s good enough. Everybody has to step up. It’s not one guy. You’re not going to replace Kevin with one guy. It’s the team getting better as a group is what I’m looking to replace him with.”

Durant’s surprise ailment is one of a spate of injuries that has hit the league early in preseason.

Boston’s Rajon Rondo already will miss at least the first month of the regular season after breaking a bone in his left hand in a freak accident at home that was initially thought by some as incurred in a trampoline park after going there twice with his kids.

Washington’s Bradley Beal, who had a breakout season last year, also fractured his left wrist in a preseason game against Charlotte last week and is expected to miss two months after undergoing surgery over the weekend. His teammate, forward Kris Humphries, is also expected to miss a month after surgery to repair nerve damage in his finger suffered while playing against Chicago. That was the game where Paul Pierce and Joakim Noah had an altercation that led to four Wizards being suspended and $15,000 fines for both Noah and Pierce.

Raymond Felton of Dallas, meanwhile, suffered a high ankle sprain in an exhibition contest against Oklahoma City and is now on crutches with a protective boot on his right foot. He’s expected to miss an extended period.

On the other hand, OKC’s rookie forward Mitch McGary sustained a broken left foot in the Thunder’s preseason opener against Denver and will be out from five to seven weeks. And Nick Young of the LA Lakers suffered a ligament tear in his right thumb in training camp and underwent surgery that will make him miss the first two weeks of the season. 

None of them, however, could potentially be more damaging than the one that has hit, and stopped, Durant right now.

SHORTSHOTS: Knicks president Phil Jackson is putting his players this season through “mindfulness” training – where players undergo a form of meditation that stresses the importance of staying in the moment – just as he did his previous teams in Chicago and Los Angeles. This is to make them mentally stronger by imbibing the principles of mindfulness, visualization and other techniques associated with Eastern religions. “This is one of the things that they have to go through if they’re going to be part of the Knick organization,” said Jackson, whose affinity for Eastern philosophy, as his moniker “Zen Master” indicates, is well-known. “There’s a mindfulness training program that’s very logical and very calm, quiet, and we’ve started the process with this team, and (first-year head coach) Derek (Fisher is) all for it.  He’s a proponent of it,” Jackson said. “And yet I think that it’s kind of what I am inserting in here as part of what I think has to happen because I know what effect it (has). I think it’s very difficult sometimes for a coach to do this because it’s so anti what we are as athletes… Yet it’s so vital for a team to have this skill or players to have this skill. To be able to divorce themselves from what just happened that’s inherent to them – a referee’s bad call, or an issue that goes on individually or against your opponent.  You’ve got to be able to come back to your center and center yourself again.”… Dallas coach Rick Carlisle apologized to forward Chandler Parsons for publicly criticizing the recently-acquired free agent’s additional weight and conditioning after the Mavericks’ 118-109 preseason loss to Oklahoma City. “It was unfair and inappropriate to single out Chandler Parsons after the game Friday night,” Carlisle said over the weekend. “I have apologized to him and the entire team for this error in judgment.”… LeBron James finds comments coming from former teammates in Miami “surprising.” Chris Bosh has said that Kevin Love, James’ teammate now in Cleveland, will find it hard playing with a new alpha dog in Cleveland. Mario Chalmers, meanwhile, warned Kyrie Irving that he will have to adjust to James’ leadership style where he is used to dominating the ball. Dwyane Wade, on the other hand, said that the last season of his friend in Miami “wasn’t fun.”  He said it more, however, in the context of the outsized expectations that LeBron’s presence invariably brought, and which were thoroughly shattered in a 4-1 loss to San Antonio in the finals. – Rappler.com

---

Bert A. Ramirez has been a freelance sportswriter/columnist since the ’80s, writing mostly about the NBA and once serving as consultant and editor for Tower Sports Magazine, the longest-running locally published NBA magazine, from 1999 to 2008.  He has also written columns and articles for such publications as Malaya, Sports Digest, Winners Sports Weekly, Pro Guide, Sports Weekly, Sports Flash, Sports World, Basketball Weekly and the FIBA’s International Basketball, and currently writes a fortnightly column for QC Life and a weekly blog for BostonSports Desk. A former corporate manager, Bert has breathed, drunk and slept sports most of his life.