What Does Kevin Durant Testing Positive for Coronavirus Mean for the Brooklyn Nets and the NBA?

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep the globe, the newest set of NBA stars have been affected by the virus. The first NBA player to test positive was the Frenchman Rudy Gobert, the All-Star center for the Utah Jazz. Hours later, his Jazz teammates were tested and fellow All-Star Donovan Mitchell also tested positive.

After that, news of NBA players testing positive for the coronavirus stayed mostly quiet. Two days after the league was suspended indefinitely and started its hiatus, Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports reported that all Raptors players had tested negative for the virus, which was significant since they had recently played in Utah. The day after, on the 14th, The Athletic’s Shams Charnia reported that Pistons center Christian Wood, who is having a breakout year, had tested positive for the virus. The Pistons had played the Jazz recently, and Wood had matched up with Gobert.

Ever since then, however, near silence. Until Tuesday March 17th, when Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported that 4 Brooklyn Nets players had tested positive for COVID-19, and that 3 of the 4 were asymptomatic. An hour and a half later, Shams reported that one of these 4 players was Kevin Durant, the prized superstar free agent acquisition for Brooklyn, and that he was feeling fine.

Where does this leave Brooklyn, and the rest of the NBA season?

There has been overwhelming evidence all year that an “early return” for the Nets forward has been inevitable, including pre-existing return dates, his accelerated rehab process, and cryptic messages sent out to the public by those around him. As long as his best friend Kyrie Irving was healthy, a Durant return around March was inevitable.

📷

Unfortunately, Kyrie Irving was not healthy this season, playing only 20 games. He encountered what seemed to be a short term shoulder issue early in the year during a road trip that hit Phoenix, Denver and Utah. He was held out a while until he opted to take a cortisone shot, which worked for a while. He returned and played great ball for the Nets, only to suffer a freak injury while colliding with Bradley Beal in Washington. Luckily, he recovered over the All-Star break.

However, the cortisone shot wore off and his shoulder started acting up again. That was the end of Kyrie’s season, as he opted for surgery.

Now that the NBA is on an indefinite hiatus and could resume in June, there has been more buzz for a Durant return, especially since Irving’s recovery time from surgery could still end before the hiatus ended.

But now, with the coronavirus news, it seems Durant’s season is overwhelmingly likely over even when it seemed there was a glimmer of hope of him returning. As more and more cases pile up for NBA players, it also becomes more likely that the NBA season will conclude without a champion, and this hiatus will not finish with a “happily ever after” moment.