TORONTO — When Kevin Durant went down on the court early in the second quarter with an apparent Achilles injury, the first person I thought about was Kevin Garnett. When you cover a championship team you tend to view most things through the prism of that experience.
Sports dynasties die slowly, and then all at once. There are a million little signposts we’ll retrofit onto the Warriors’ demise should it come either Monday night (Game 5 is at 9 p.m. ET on ABC) or later this week. The fraught relationship between the team and Kevin Durant has seemingly deepened since Durant has been unable to play while teammates DeMarcus Cousins, Klay Thompson, and Kevon Looney are all playing hurt. Everyone seems to be saying the right things, but there is enough smoke from the well-established Bay Area media to suggest something’s amiss. (How fitting that a team led by Kawhi Leonard would potentially take advantage of tumult over disagreements on the viability of playing with an injury.)
Kevin Durant has been cleared to return to practice. The superstar - who hasn’t played in over a month with a calf injury - will practice with his Golden State Warriors teammates today ahead of Monday’s NBA Finals Game 5 against the Toronto Raptors.
TORONTO — Coming off the floor at Oracle Arena, having taken two games from the two-time defending champs on their floor and heading home with the knowledge that they were one win away from securing an NBA championship, the Raptors showed us nothing. No laughter, no smiles, not even a fist pump or a high-five.
After lucking into the No. 4 pick at last month’s NBA Draft Lottery, the Los Angeles Lakers will be tasked with picking the fourth-best player in a draft that most people think is only three players deep. Fun stuff, right?
Warriors Star Kevin Durant finally experienced a moment of clarity on his injured right calf. Durant is expected to play when the Warriors face the Toronto Raptors in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Monday.
Granted, Durant’s return elicits more questions. To what extent can Durant mirror his league-leading 34.2 points he averaged during the NBA playoffs before injuring his right calf in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals
The NBA offseason got its first jolt yesterday when the Brooklyn Nets unloaded Allen Crabbe on the Atlanta Hawks for the price of two first-round picks. Admittedly, it feels silly to get excited about a salary dump in the middle of the Finals, but this is the path that fans of lottery teams have chosen.
The Golden State Warriors played the best defense of their season in the first half of Game 4. They had no other choice but to do so — being down 2-1 against the Toronto Raptors made playing near-flawless defense a necessity. They had the tools to accomplish such a feat — Klay Thompson was back from his hamstring strain, and Kevon Looney made a miraculous recovery from his collarbone fracture, a surprising development given that it seemed like he was going to be sidelined for the rest of the season.
There’s a popular strain of basketball thought that attempts to assess whether certain players could be the best player on a team that wins the NBA championship, or the second best or third best player, or a starter, or in the rotation. If you can’t imagine a world in which said player fits the appropriate role that his salary and status demand, then that’s not a good use of resources.
