J-Speaks: Two-Time Defending Champion Warriors Lose Durant Again To Leg Injury

After missing the last nine postseason games with a right calf strain, the equivalent of 32 days, back-to-back NBA Finals MVP Kevin Durant returned for Game 5 of the 2019 Finals at the Eastern Conference Champion Toronto Raptors. He got off to a strong start but his return to the court was cut short due to another devastating lower body injury. 

In the early part of the second quarter of the Warriors 106-105 win on Monday night that cut the series deficit to 3-2, Durant while attempting a left-to-right crossover on the right wing against Raptors big man Serge Ibaka suffered an injury to his right leg where he fell to the floor. 

The 10-time All-Star and four-time scoring champion after falling to the hardwood grabbed the back part of his leg, below the calf and right around his left Achilles. 

Durant was assisted back to the Warriors’ locker room by General Manager Bob Myers, 2015 Finals MVP Andre Iguodala on Durant’s left side and two-time Kia MVP Stephen Curry. 

Durant was seen leaving Scotiabank Arena later on that night on crutches with his injured leg in a walking boot. 

The severity of the KD’s injury was revealed on Wednesday as he posted on his Instagram @easymoneysniper that he ruptured his right Achilles tendon, which required immediate surgery, that took place in New York. 

He also posted on his Instagram page a photo of him in his hospital bed recovering from the surgery, writing in a caption, “What’s good everybody I wanted to update you all: I did rupture my Achilles. Surgery was today and it was a success, EASY MONEY.” 

“My road back starts now! I got my family and loved ones by my side and we truly appreciate all the messages and support people have sent our way.” 

“Like I said Monday, I’m hurting deeply, but I’m OK. Basketball is my biggest love and I wanted to be out there that night because that’s what I do. I wanted to help my teammates on our quest for the three peat.” 

“It’s just the way things go in this game and I’m proud that I gave it all I physically could, and I’m proud my brothers got the W. It’s going to be a journey but I’m built for this. I’m a hooper I know my brothers can get this Game 6, and I will be cheering with dub nation while they do it.” 

The Warriors organization also released their own statement on Wednesday night saying that the surgery on Durant’s ruptured Achilles, which was performed at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York by Dr. Martin O’Malley. 

“The surgery was successful and Durant is recovering well,” the Warriors public relations department said on their Twitter page @Warriors PR. 

During his media session on Wednesday, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said that the team had no idea that Durant was at a high risk of the injury he sustained by returning from the previously mentioned strained calf. 

“Kevin checked all the boxes,” Kerr said. “He was cleared to play by everybody involved. Now, would we go back and do it over? Damn right. But that’s easy to say with the results.” 

“When we gathered all the information, our feeling was the worst thing that could happen would be a re-injure of the calf. That was the advice and the information that we had. At that point, once Kevin was cleared to play, he was comfortable with that, we were comfortable with that. So, the Achilles came as a complete shock.” 

Before the injury, Durant looked like he did not miss any time at all scoring 11 points, going 3 for 3 from three-point range in the opening stanza. 

Durant, Curry, and fellow perennial All-Star Klay Thompson combined for 31 of the Warriors 34 points in the first quarter, with the team going 7 for 11 from three-point range. 

To put that into context, the Warriors had made a total of 10 three-pointers in 35 tries in the opening stanza through the first four games of the 2019 Finals. 

The big question when the 2019 Finals began was when Durant going to return and what would his impact be when he did return to the Warriors lineup. 

The team hoped he would play close to the player that in his Finals career averaged 31.7 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 4.9 assists on 55 percent from the field and 43 percent from three-point range. 

Before his injury, Durant had been playing like the best player in the 2019 postseason not named Kawhi Leonard of the Raptors averaging 34.2 points on 51 percent shooting. 

In the five games Durant was out dating back to the Game 6 clincher of the Western Conference Semifinals at the No. 4 Seeded Houston Rockets and the four-game sweep of the No. 3 Seeded Portland Trail Blazers in the Western Conference Finals, the team averaged 115.4 points per game, with a +8.6 point per game differential, shooting 49 percent from the field, going 5-0 in that stretch of their postseason. 

In the first four games of the 2019 Finals against the Raptors, the Warriors went 1-3 averaging 104.8 points on 44 percent from the field, with a point per game differential of -7.7. 

Durant gave the Warriors as mentioned earlier a huge lift in their win-or-go-home win on Monday night, where they overcame a 103-97 deficit in the final two-plus minutes with a 9-2 scoring run. 

If anything, the last 48 hours has shown is that the team and Durant needed each other and that they would not be in the position to three-peat without him. 

To bring this point into clearer context, in the Warriors previous two Finals appearances where they took down the Cleveland Cavaliers, they went 8-1. Before Durant arrived in 2016, the Warriors went 7-6 in The Finals against the Cavs, losing in the 2016 Finals in seven games after leading that series 3-1. 

“Obviously, prayers out to KD,” Curry who had 31 points with seven assists and eight rebounds said to ESPN/ABC’s Doris Burke after the win on Monday night. “He gave us what he could, and we hope he makes a speedy recovery. But that’s kind of been our M.O. of our team. He sacrificed his body for us. I just feel bad for him.” 

He added about his teammate a couple of days later, “Everybody has great 20/20 hindsight. I trust our medical staff and know Bob Myers has our best interests in terms of not just what we can do in this series, but in our long term in our overall health. You see how hard he took it, talking to you guys after the game. And that’s really genuine and authentic. So, you can waste time talking about the what-ifs and this, and that. Injuries are tough and they suck. They’re a part of our game, and they’re going to continue to be a part of our game. But everybody putting their collective brains together to make the sound, smart decisions, you kind of just live with that, because that’s what’s part of our game.” 

One person even more hurt by Durant’s injury was GM Myers, who did not hold back tears in his postgame presser in relaying the information he had at that moment about Durant’s injury. 

Myers said that Durant went through four weeks of MRI’s with team doctors, consisting of many backs and fourths with experts, where they felt very good about the process and led to him being cleared to play in Game 5 via a collaborative decision by the organization, the medical staff and Durant himself. 

“I don’t believe there is anybody to blame, but I understand this world and you have to, you can blame me,” Myers said about who is to blame for what happened to Durant. “I run our basketball operations department. I am the president of basketball [operations]. If you have to, but I don’t think there’s anybody to blame, but I get it. That stuff happens.” 

“I hope nobody does. I don’t think it should land on anybody but if you feel like you need to-The people he worked with and cleared him are good people. They’re good people” 

He also said to reporters, “Let me tell you something about Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant loves to play basketball, and the people that questioned whether he wanted to get back to this team were wrong.” 

“He is one of the most misunderstood people. He’s a good teammate; good person. It’s not fair. I’m lucky to know him….” 

“Sports is people. I know Kevin takes a lot of hits sometimes but he just wants to play basketball and right now he can’t. “Basketball has gotten him through his life. I don’t think we all can understand how much it means to him. [He] just wants to play basketball with his teammates and compete.” 

The other silver-lining is that there have been players that have had this injury that have comeback and played to the level prior blowing their Achilles. 

Durant’s teammate DeMarcus Cousins, future Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant and current San Antonio Spur Rudy Gay all returned to the hardwood. That also includes Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins, who tore his Achilles at the peak of his career in the early 1990s and returned better than ever. Former NBA All-Star Elton Brand, who now leads the front office for the Philadelphia 76ers hurt his Achilles but never regained the form he had. Neither did former Minnesota Timberwolves’ Atlanta Hawks and Washington Wizards forward Christian Laettner who went from a star player to a role player following his Achilles injury. 

One player that had surgery on his right Achilles tendon and is in the process of making a comeback is Washington Wizards perennial All-Star lead guard John Wall, who signed a four-year, $170 million super max contract extension on July 26, 2017. 

The No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 draft had season-ending surgery on his left heel back in January 2019, where he developed an infection in the incision from the surgery. The surgery on his Achilles was necessary after Wall slipped and fell in his home. 

Durant has fought back from injuries to his lower body before. He came back from a right foot fracture that limited him to just 27 games in the 2014-15 season while he was with the Oklahoma City Thunder. 

Five years back he sustained a “Jones fracture” in his foot that required surgery that shelved him until the last month of 2014. He played off and on the first two months of the new year before the Thunder shut him down for the remainder of that NBA campaign to have a third procedure done on that same foot. 

For most of his time in the “Bay Area,” Durant has been relatively healthy, with his longest absence from the lineup was 19 games in his first season with the Warriors due to a strained MCL in his left knee. He missed two games of the team’s First-Round series in 2017 against the Trail Blazers because of a strained left calf muscle but came back and helped to lead the Warriors to their second title in three seasons, while capturing his first NBA title while also winning the first of two straight Bill Russell Finals MVPs. 

It took Kevin Durant over a month to get back onto the hardwood after sustaining a right calf strain in Game 5 of the West Semis versus the Rockets. Even when a lot of people questions whether he was going to comeback with free agency for him on the horizon, he wanted to come back, and in concert with the Warriors’ medical staff he worked tooth and nail to get back, which he did on Monday night in a game the Warriors needed to have in order to keep their hopes of winning their third straight title alive. 

The Warriors won the game but lost Durant in the process and now he has the task of not only deciding to either exercise his $31 million player option to remain with the Warriors for next season or turn down that player option, become a free agent and see if he wants to stay in the “Bay Area” on a possible deal worth over $220 million or sign with another team like the Los Angeles Clippers, Brooklyn Nets or New York Knicks, which have been linked to him possibly signing with this summer. He has to do decide all of that while going through rigorous rehab from this Achilles injury. 

According to “Sports Illustrated’s” Chris Mannix and ESPN’s NBA front office expert Bobby Marks, interest in still signing Durant remains undiminished and that he is still the prized catch in free agency if he decides to opt out of the last year of his contract this summer, even if he missed the entire 2019-20 season. 

Durant said following surgery on his Achilles that he is built to come back from this. He has seen firsthand from his teammate in DeMarcus Cousins the highs and lows this process will entail, but that getting back on the court can become reality if he takes a positive and determined approach to it. 

The thing that Kevin Durant loves the most, the game of basketball just got taken away from him. What is comforting as Durant begins the grueling rehabilitation process is the aforementioned fact he has been through this before and the great support system around him starting with his mother Wanda Durant and his entire family, the whole Warriors organization from the front office, to head coach Steve Kerr and his coaching staff to his teammates, who he will be routing like crazy for them to tie the series in Game 6 in the last game for Oracle Arena in Oakland, CA Thursday night on ABC. If the Warriors win Game 6, they will become only the fourth team in NBA Finals history to force a Game 7 after trailing 3-1.  

“He’s having a rough time right now, but with the love of our faith and our God and our family we’re going to be okay,” Mrs. Durant said to Robin Roberts on Wednesday’s edition of ABC News’ “Good Morning America” about her son’s emotions after suffering the Achilles injury. 

She also added in a Twitter post from her account @MamaDurant, “For ALL of you who question my son as a Man, question his Heart, question his Integrity and question his LOVE for the game of basketball, you DON’T know him. He has a heart of a true Warrior! This too shall pass. God Bless you ALL.”  

Information, statistics, and quotations are courtesy of 6/10/19 8:30 p.m. edition of ESPN/ABC’s “NBA Countdown,” presented by Straight Talk Wireless with Michelle Beadle, Paul Pierce, Jalen Rose, Chauncey Billups, and Doris Burke; 6/10/19 9 p.m. “Golden State Warriors versus Toronto Raptors,” Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals, presented by YouTubeTV with Mike Breen, Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson, and Doris Burke; 6/12/19 7 a.m. edition of ABC News' "Good Morning America," with Robin Roberts, Michael Strahan, George Stephanopoulos, Lara Spencer, and Ginger Zee; 6/12/19 5:30 p.m. edition of ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon; 6/12/19 ESPN News crawl; 6/13/19 www.nba.com story, “Kevin Durant Confirms He Suffered Ruptured Right Achilles;” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Durant; and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wall_(basketball)#2018-19_season.