After missing six-plus weeks of action due to an MCL sprain, Brooklyn Nets superstar Kevin Durant is expected to return to the court on Thursday night against the East-leading Miami Heat at Barclays Center. The 12-time All-Star will certainly be a sight for fans' sore eyes, as the team won only five of 21 games in his absence.
Durant isn't exactly rejoining a familiar cast of teammates. Last month, the Nets traded superstar guard James Harden to the Philadelphia 76ers for a package headlined by Ben Simmons and future draft picks. An ugly losing streak, coupled with inconsistent play and contributors, has pushed them down to the East's eighth seed with a 32-31 record. And the Nets are now running out of time to right the ship and reemerge as a true contender.
"It just feels like they've dug themselves a little bit too much of a hole for this season, doesn't it?" NBC Sports writer Kurt Helin explained to the Reiter Than You show on Thursday. "Kevin Durant's going to come back and pretty quickly, I expect him to return to best player walking the face of the earth. Durant was playing at an MVP level, 29 points a game. Look, they went 5-16 without him.
"Yes, there's a lot of other stuff going on. But I think that just speaks to how critical he is to what they do in Brooklyn. They become good again with him. They can potentially become great if Kyrie's able to play all the games and is invested, if Ben Simmons comes and accepts a role... The road is too tough, coming from the seven or eight seed, for them to get all the way through this year. The hole has just gotten too big."
Durant, who suffered the knee injury on Jan. 15 in a win over the New Orleans Pelicans, has averaged 29.3 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 5.8 assists this season (36 games). At the time of his MCL sprain, Brooklyn was 27-15 overall, second in the East standings. Whether or not Durant is feeling 100-percent, he'll need to do a lot of heavy lifting. Simmons' season debut has yet to be announced, and Kyrie Irving is still ineligible for home games, due to his vaccine status.
With 20 games left, the Nets currently have a 57-percent chance to reach the playoffs and less than a 1-percent chance to make the NBA Finals, according to FiveThirtyEight's projections. If the regular season ended today, Brooklyn would have to play in the league's recently implemented play-in tournament.
The entire NBA conversation between Helin and Reiter can be accessed in the audio player above.
You can follow the Reiter Than You show on Twitter @sportsreiter and @CBSSportsRadio, and Tom Hanslin @TomHanslin.