The Brooklyn Nets are still being undermined. They announced that Kevin Durant, Blake Griffin and LaMarcus Aldridge will be against the 76ers on Wednesday night, except for James Harden staying off the sidelines.
The good news for Brooklyn is that Kyrie Irving is available to play after missing Tuesday’s game against the Minnesota Timberwolves while attending a family affair.
The Nets are also without the guard Chris Chiozza. Chiozza, who started in Irving’s place on Tuesday, underwent surgery on Wednesday to repair a broken right finger. He sustained the injury against the Timberwolves.
Harden is still strained along the sideline, and Tyler Johnson is still working through pain in his right knee.
Aldridge is being held with a non-COVID-19 illness, and Griffin is on an injury day with an ongoing knee problem.
On Tuesday, Durant played 27 minutes against the Timberwolves, even while the Nets’ lead was up to 40 points. Coach Steve Nash said the Nets want to continue to increase his playing time to 30 minutes as he recovers from a hamstring injury, but that is a “troublesome balance.”
“He needs to play a certain amount of minutes to his advantage,” Nash said Tuesday. “At the same time, if the game is so out of hand, you get caught, like: do we want to run the risk of being there in the game at this point? In an ideal world he would play close to 30 minutes, but at the same time he is on the “End of the game in meaningless minutes out there – you want to be careful too. We’re trying to find the balance.”
Durant said Tuesday that the increase in his workload feels ‘good’ and that he will determine his status for Wednesday after seeing how his body recovers and joining the team’s training staff.
“I felt my wind and legs coming under me in every minute I played, and that’s the most – that’s really what I wanted this time,” Durant said.
Durant said the Nets are looking forward to the 76ers, who teamed up with the Nets for the no. 1st place in the Eastern Conference, but they are more focused on getting the whole team together on the floor. After all, the big three of the Nets have only played seven games together.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the fewest games the NK champion’s top three scorers played together during the regular season were ten, when the Shaquille O’Neal-Kobe Bryant-Derek Fisher Lakers won in 2001. After Wednesday, the Nets will have only 17 games left in the regular season.
“I think for us we all want to be healthy and enjoyable at what we do there, and I think that’s just as important as circling the calendar for Philly,” Durant said. “They are an excellent team, well coached and I’m sure a team that we’ll be running into here soon, but for us at this stage we want to continue to refine what we do to get better things that make us who we are , and we’ll see what happens in the queue. ‘