This would be, if it comes in the spring, an excellent playoff series, for sure. Talent against the collective, chaos against order, verses against cement. Heat and Nets, right now, are not even two different teams: they are two completely opposite ways of seeing life. And yes, they would mix (we imagine) in an excellent playoff series. But in her (we also imagine) would all be those missing this time: on one side Kyle Lowry, Jimmy Butler and PJ Tucker. In the other Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons. Without five such important ones, the victory of the Heat (107-113) says little about what that theoretical future duel would be beyond the fact that the absences were completely obscured by the return: Kevin Durant played again.
K.D. He had not played a game since January 15, more than half and a half off the court due to a knee injury that has crushed a team that was second and was fighting for the head of the East when its great star fell. Since then, 5-16 in 21 games without him (the third worst balance in the NBA in that stretch), the transfer of James Harden and the collapse to what it is now, with yet another defeat, 50% of victories (32-32). Eighth place in the East, three games from the seventh and, beware, with only one advantage over the tenth, the last in play in.
A Nets having to row from last place in the playoffs is, as things stand, a real possibility. Let’s continue speculating: in that case and if they exceed the two heads or tails of the play inthey would play against the first in the East… right now Miami Heat (42-22), the cement: two and a half games ahead of the second, the new Sixers who, with James Harden on board, will not stop being compared to the Nets. We are looking for winners and losers of one of the most important transfers in recent years. For this reason, these two teams are united, their futures linked as communicating vessels.
Went back K.D. and did it with his majestic presence intact: 31 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 10/21 shooting, more than 35 minutes on the court. He missed his first two shots but then scored four for nine points in the first quarter (35-23). He finished with eight straight points in the first half, a stretch in which the Nets threatened to break the game: 57-41 at 4:38 of a break that was reached at 67-60. Then Erik Spoelstra’s zone arrived and the night was made in Brooklyn: 17 points and 6/28 shots for his rival in the third quarter and a turnaround (84-88) already sustained until a final in which the Nets almost came back 12 points: with 107-109 Seth Curry missed triples and a Durant who was able to complete the comeback but did not make a shot that normally scores with his eyes closed. That’s where the effort came a team that is a gigantic unknown and so it will be, for better or for worse, until play in and the playoffs. That he played without Kyrie and that he doesn’t know when he’ll get Simmons. And in which this time Seth Curry was not inspired (8 points, 2/7 in triples). Points from Patty Mills and work from a very recovered Bruce Brown (21 points) were the only good news in what is basically a big question mark right now.
Contrary to the Heat, with personality and form even without three of their best players and in a terrifying back to back after playing on the Bucks court (and losing by the hair). Bam Adebayo (30+11+6), Max Strus (21 points), Caleb Martin (22 points) and Tyler Herro (27 and 8 assists) explained to the Nets the difference between a team and an incomplete collection of talent. They were taught the use of having a safety net, forged day by day, with which to survive apparently lethal absences. But it doesn’t matter, nothing that is written about this game will work, for better or for worse, if in the playoffs the orbits of two teams that are completely different bodies, entities that don’t even speak the same language: two ways of understanding life. Right now, yes, one much healthier than the other.
#Durant #returns #wreck